Percents and Proportions

Proportional reasoning is a hugely important skill, both in math class and in life. Scaling anything up or down accurately, and keeping everything in the proper ratios, requires it. Want to adjust a recipe for fewer or more people than originally intended? Proportional reasoning. Need to translate from a map or a blueprint to reality (or vice versa)? That’s proportional reasoning too.

What can be tricky is how to picture these relationships. This is where the Percents and Proportions Gizmo excels. It gives students an interactive “ruler” of sorts so they can actually see the ratio of the part to the whole.

Learning to solve proportions by memorizing something mechanical like “part over whole equals percent over 100” may work (if the numbers get plugged in in the right spots), but that is not the same as really understanding the concept. Try this Gizmo out and see if it helps develop proportional reasoning that will actually “stick” in your students’ long-term memory.

The post Gizmo of the Week: Percents and Proportions appeared first on ExploreLearning News.