Unifix Cubes

In our class we are beginning Central Tendency next week and I am excited about the activity that uses unifix cubes to help students explore mean, median, mode and range. Unifix cubes are similar to Lego's in the sense that they are small plastic blocks that link together. Students grab a handful of these blocks from a bucket and line up at the front of the room. They count their individual blocks and then put themselves in order from least to greatest. The students can find the range by the lowest and highest students stepping forward, the mode by seeing which number of blocks appears most often, the median by the middle student, and then finally the mean. This is the interesting part. The students begin to "share their blocks" so that each student has the same number of blocks. Most of the time it does not work out this way and so the students can estimate that the mean will be between the two numbers of the amount of blocks the students have. A chart can be kept under the doc cam so that the actual mathematics can be worked out simultaneously. I find the students enjoy this hands on exploration and they also remember a lot from it.