Percents

For the past week and a half we have been learning about percents in VSC Math. It's been quite challenging passing on the conceptual knowledge. I've given students some of the following questions:

We've used some tape diagram models to solve some of the questions. For some of my students, prior experience with simplifying/reducing is an issue. Some haven't mastered this concept so solving these by making proportions can be troublesome. Also, some of them still struggle with the idea of a proportion or why we would use it. Cross multiplication can be used and some have preferred that (cross multiplying and dividing by the number without a "partner"), along with turning the percent into a decimal and multiplying (if we're looking for the discount). 

We have completed unit 1 and we will start unit 2 next week. It's an ongoing struggle when students are missing foundational skills from prior grades that prevents them from making extreme progress in 6th grade. The next unit encompasses 6.NS standards. I hope that all if not most of the students can really grasp the concept of division before we begin to tackle dividing fractions by fractions, and doing so with word problems.