Day 49: Percent of a Number

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.RP.3c Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity); solve problems involving finding the whole, given a part and the percent.

6.NS.6c Find and position integers and other rational numbers on a horizontal or vertical number line 
diagram; find and position pairs of integers and other rational numbers on a coordinate plane.
The Learning Objective: Find the percent of a number given a whole number percent from 1 to 100.

Quote of the Day: “Adversity can make us stronger, smarter, better, tougher. Blaming your troubles on bad luck makes you weaker. Most worthwhile things in the competitive world come wrapped in adversity.”

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart with a word problem for dividing fractions
2. Review Homework
3. 20% or $20? From Dan Meyer with slight modifications by me
4. Notes
5. Work on the homework 

The Assessment: Circumventing the room as students completed notes and homework

Homework: Page 151 or Percentage Worksheet

My Glass Half-Full Take: The students could meet the objective. I checked every student in the student in the class and they could do what was asked of them.

One Thing to Do Differently: I was not in class for part of the day because of a meeting, so it wasn't a perfect lesson in terms of knowing what went wrong since I did not get to see it. This objective was very easy to meet though as my colleagues pretty much had them master it before I came in (perhaps I should just let them take over all the time). I liked in my second and third classes that I saw that I offered them problems with percentages greater than 100, less than one, and percentages between that had decimals. It was also important to note that more than half the class referred to 8% as 0.8.

Link of the Day: This is a great estimation picture. And a great problem for discussing differences, and how we can all find something in common if we search for it.