The purpose of this activity is to support students in finding the missing part in part-whole percentage problems.
Pose this word problem, or an adaptation that reflects a context that is relevant to your students.
You take 20 shots at goal and score with 55% of the shots.
How many shots do you score with?
Let students attempt the problem, possibly in pairs.
Students may solve the problem using trial and error. Since 55% is more than one half they may try fractions like 12/20 or 11/20 to find out if those fractions equal 55%. The approach is likely to be successful in this example.
Use a double number line to organise the information from the problem and display their solution strategies.
An alternative is to consider:
What percentage is each shot worth? How do you know? (5% since 100% divided by 20 equals 5%)
How many shots, at 5% each, make 55%? (11 since 11 x 5 = 55%)
Next steps
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/finding-missing-part at 4:27am on the 8th May 2024