Commentary: Percent Puzzles

 

            This activity first uses tiles and then Cuisinaire Rods to get at some of the trickiest aspects of understanding percents.  I tell students that with the manipulatives we can highlight some of the important issues without the confusion of a context. Many of these issues pertain to finding the whole, particularly in when talking about percent increases and decreases.  Other issues spring from dealing with percentages higher than 100%.  Students often initially miss many of the true-false questions at the end, but the questions are effective for helping clarify the concepts.  8/05

 

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