My sixth graders came to me confused this week about finding the median from numbers in a table. I determined that they must have been talking about a frequency table.

First, I helped them to understand what each number represented: in our case, the number of houses that had the given number of dogs.

Then we tried to visualize what all of the numbers would look like if they were written on index cards and hung from a rope with clothespins. I drew a few of the cards: we said that there were 13 houses with 0 dogs, so I drew five cards and wrote "0" on them.

Then I asked one of the students to help me to demonstrate what that might mean on a rope. We each held an end then I folded it in the middle, and asked the students, "What number would be here?"

It worked! They could visualize the process and seemed to have a clear understanding that the median is actually the middle of something: in this case a rope. They understood that half of the responses, in this case the numbers of dogs each household had, would be on one half of the rope and the other half would be on the other half, with the median right in the middle!

If you have other ideas for teaching the meaning of frequency tables or how to find the median, without writing out 73 numbers in order, please send in your ideas and suggestions. --Lauren