Percent of a Number

Today we introduced a way to model finding percents of numbers.  This image shows a drawing we did to find out what 25% of $32 is.  We drew a bar to represent 100% (top one) and a bar to represent $32.  Then we saw that there are 4 groups of 25% in 100%.  So we divided the $32 bar into 40 groups.  Therefore each group would be $8.  So, 25% of $32 is $8.

Check out the drawing below!

We also discussed a way to solve the problems by setting up ratios.  Here is a problem we had in class and below are some students' methods used to solve the problem.  Notice the ones that use a "%/100 = is/of" strategy!