These percents and proportions activities are the perfect addition to your lesson.
Teaching percents and proportions is a unit that I always look forward to.
It’s one of the few times a year that the math content is something students will 100% use in their regular daily life! The class that I’m teaching this year consists of half of the 7th-grade curriculum and 100% of the 8th Grade/Pre-Algebra curriculum. This means, my students are learning proportions and percent proportions in addition to consumer math.
If you teach a traditional Pre-Algebra class, my guess is that you are simply reviewing proportions and percent proportions before diving into multi-step problems. If that’s the case you may wish to skip to Day 7 of this 12-day unit!
By the end of this blog post, you will have lesson ideas to set you up for success with teaching all things proportions and problem-solving!
Kick off day 1 with some ratio review. I quickly did this with a ratios drag and drop activity, I did it with the whole class but you could also assign it individually. That’s pretty much it for the ratio review. It was too late when I realized my students needed a little more ratio review. So you may want to spend a little more time on it than I did!
After this review, we dived straight into proportions. I started the lesson by writing a ratio on the board and asking them for a ratio that would be equivalent. We took guided notes and then students did some independent practice while I pulled small groups. At the end of class, we did an exit ticket!
The next day, we started using proportions to solve word problems. I wait to start word problems when I am certain that they understand how to solve for x. I like to introduce this lesson with a 10-minute PBS video where teens are using proportions to bake beet (yuck) cookies video (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJipgy0vUWE ) about proportions.
In the video, pre-teens are baking beet cookies and using proportions!
Next up, we take guided notes.
I love using the W.K.U. method to solve proportions. Students must first set up a Word Ratio, followed by the actual proportion that includes a Known Ratio (the one where we KNOW both numbers) and then the Unknown Ratio (the one where the mysterious/unknown x resides).
Many students will try to skip the word ratio because they don’t understand the importance. They start to either assume that the smallest number is always on top of that the first number written goes on top. When this happens, I typically start also writing the words with the numbers in the proportion.
We start day 4 with guided notes! To prepare for today, I have students take out at least three different colored pens, markers, or highlighters. If they don’t have access to color, they can just use a variety of shapes!
For this, we move pretty slowly. Students need a lot of time to wrap their minds around the percent equation. We choose a different color for is, of, and percent.
Use colors, lots of colors, or at least shapes!
Start slow with just basic problems and then move into word problems. Reinforce part/whole = %/100 for word problems. Many students will assume that you write the numbers in order of appearance.
We finish day 4 with mean girls. Yup, THAT Mean Girls! I play a short clip where Regina is trying to determine the percentage of calories from fat in her protein bar. I pause the video at 13 seconds and ask students if they can figure out the percentage.
After everyone has a chance to try it out, I finish the video so Cady can answer the question for us.
On Day 5, we dived deeper into percent word problems! For this, I reinforce the idea of part/whole = %/100.
On Day 6. We played percent proportions bingo!
Does anyone still use a checkbook? My students asked me the last time I wrote a check and I literally can’t remember. Most of the time, I will use a cashier’s check or money order for big purchases. But either way, it is still in the curriculum so nonetheless, we teach!
We started with balancing the budget guided notes and then went into the following budgeting activity.
I only spend one day on this because as long as students understand the vocabulary of credit, debit, withdraw, and deposit, they’re good!
Solving proportions and percent problems doesn’t have to be a hard concept to grasp, students can learn in a fun way that will make sense and stick with them! I hope you enjoy this Consumer Math unit that will break things down into chunks and help students practice in an engaging way!
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