These word problems come from Practice A in the 5B Standards Edition Textbook (p. 68). This particular practice follows six lessons on “Percentage” and “Writing Fractions as Percentages”. Notice how the challenge progresses through the seven problems.
Let’s look at the underlying concepts of each problem:
5. No computation is needed. “15 out of 100”
6. Variation in 2 levels
- Find complement: 37 marbles are green, how many aren’t?
- Convert to percentage.
7. Connects percentage to a fraction.
8. Find complement of percentage.
9. Convert fraction to percentage.
10. Corresponds to problem #5. Can you visualize: “if 14/50 how many out of 100?”
11. Multi-step. “Can you imagine how many of 100?” Demonstrates thinking proportionally.
12. First application to measures. Measurement is a continuous quantity, making this problem more abstract.
How does this progression lead to a deep understanding of the concepts?
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