Planning GuideGrade 8
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Percents

Strand: Number
Outcome: 3

Step 3: Plan for Instruction

Guiding Questions

  • What learning opportunities and experiences should I provide to promote learning of the outcomes and permit students to demonstrate their learning?
  • What teaching strategies and resources should I use?
  • How will I meet the diverse learning needs of my students?

A. Assessing Prior Knowledge and Skills

Before introducing new material, consider ways to assess and build on students’ knowledge and skills related to percents.

Ways to Assess and Build on Prior Knowledge

B. Choosing Instructional Strategies

Consider the following strategies when planning lessons:

  • Build on students' understanding of percents between 1% and 100% from the previous grade.
  • Problems involving percent should be presented in realistic and relevant contexts.
  • For percents less than 1%, use familiar fractions (halves, thirds, fourths, fifths and eighths) or easy percents (1/10, 1/100), and use numbers compatible with these fractions. The focus of these exercises is the relationships involved, not complex computational skills (see examples below).
  • Allow the students to develop their own strategies when solving problems.
  • Use the terms part, whole and percent (or fraction). Fraction and percent are interchangeable. Help the students connect percentage exercises to the same types of exercises they did with simple fractions.
  • Encourage the students to use models or drawings to explain their solutions. Remember that the purpose is the exploration of relationships, not computation skill.
  • Encourage mental calculation in the solution of percentages.

Some points adapted from John A. Van de Walle, LouAnn H. Lovin, Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics: Grades 5–8, 1e (p. 121). Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Other Instructional Strategies

C. Choosing Learning Activities

Learning Activities are examples of activities that could be used to develop student understanding of the concepts identified in Step 1.

Sample Learning Activities
Representing Percents Download Activities  Word
Benchmarks Download Activities  Word