Week Seventeen – Decimals and Percentages

Goal
- Build on current understandings of percents (almost everyone knows 50%) to use
benchmarks to figure out percetages
Materials
- We will use Greyson Wheatley’s Coming to know number grades 5-8 for most of this
cycle
Day one
Goal
- Introduce percentages by talking about sales in stores
Subordinated tasks
- Operations practice
Delivery
- Table groups, everyone with a whiteboard
- Teacher:
o I want to buy a bicycle (or something else, whatever your kids will believe). It
costs $100 at the store, but there is a sale on right now. They say it is 30% off.
The problem is, I have no clue what that means. Can you help me out?
 Someone will explain it – if not, you know where to start
 Build a definition as a class ** make sure everyone is on the same page
here with a definition
o Let’s get into percentages some more
 What is 50%?
o Draw a square on the board and cut it in half. Ask if this is 50% of the square.
o Quarter the square and ask student if they remember what you are doing with this
(half of half is a quarter – do it with fractions and decimals)
o Show them that the same principle applies to percentages
 Ask what is 50% of 10?
 So then what is 25% of 10?
 What is 75% of 10?
 Be explicit about 75 being 50 and 25.
o Try different numbers, following the same pattern, 50%, then 25, then 75
 What is 50% of 20? 25%, 75%
 What is 50% of 80
 What is 50% of 90?
 What is 50% of 24?
 What is 50% of 38?
 o If kids are done, leave it here. If they want more, begin with day 2’s work.

Day 2 – percentage shading

Goal
- Visually represent percentages
Subordinated task
- Construct and deconstruct numbers
Delivery
- Tablegroups –each kid with a laptop, or with blank 100 grids to shade (p. 216 and 217
Greyson Wheatley green book)
- If you could make this worksheet into a powerpoint or slideshow, it would be easy for
kids to work through it in chunks (three slides, then stop). You could also print out blank
sheets with no numbers on them and give the class whole numbers (or even groups)
 - Have kids work through this, then give a blank hundreds grid and tell them to create a
floor plan for a bedroom with the following parameters
o Your room must have at least two closets
o There needs to be a bed in the room
o You need a dresser
o You need a bookshelf
o You can add anything else that you want, but you must have at least 60% of the
room with blank floor space, and 40% of the room is taken up with furniture and
closets
Day 3 – Percentage benchmarks
Goal
- Work with percent benchmarks to solve multiplication questions
Subordinated tasks
- Constructing and deconstructing numbers
Delivery
- Practice day - Random partners, questions are cut up and ordered by difficulty at the front
of the room, kids will work at their own pace to complete problems
- On the board, project a percent benchmark table

- Invite someone to be your partner, and ask them if they can solve 50% (hopefully they
can, choose well)
- “Okay, I can take your 50% and figure out that 25% is half of that, so it’s 250 (write it
in). Your turn”
- Partner: I’m going to look at 1%. There are 100 10s in a thousand, so 1% is 10.
- “I’ll use your 1% to figure out 10%. I just multiply it by 10, so 10% is 100.
- Partner: so 5% is half of that, it’s 50.
- “2.5% is half of that, so it’s 25.
Then reveal the rest of the page
 - Me: okay, I’m going to choose (h), 26%. 26 is 25 and 1, I know 25% is 250 and 1% is 10,
so when I put them together, I have 26%.
Challenge students to complete these questions with their partners. Encourage talking and
circulate a lot because this can be tricky at first.

Day 4 – Thinking in percents

Goal
- Apply benchmarks and mental math to problems
Subordinated tasks
- Constructing and deconstructing numbers
Delivery
- Random partners, each with a whiteboard for solving
- Your goal as a teacher is to use this page from Greyson wheatley’s book and create
extensions of the same type of question
- Bonus points if you buy donuts for your students
- Try not to give this as a worksheet. I would present it in a similar way to the fractions
question where you drew new
squares for kids who
completed the problem. Kids
are encouraged to steal
questions
- Draw a bunch of donuts, then give kids a few verbal questions to work through