Purpose of this episode

Understand that percentages are a proportional part that depend on the size of the whole.
Develop the intuition that addition of percentages only makes sense when the percentages are of the same whole.
Find the part and the percentage; identify the whole in different situations.

Description

Children help Loomy assign parking spaces to companies based on percentages of orders. They then provide a status report for how sales are going.

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Mathematical Background

Unlike fractions that can be thought of as abstract numbers on their own, percentages are always relative to a certain amount designated as the whole.
Determining the whole takes on great importance when we need to consider how to deal with multiple percentages and what operations we can apply to them, such as when we need to figure out the price of an item with a 20% discount and 10% tax or when we want to buy an item with a 50% discount and another with a 70% discount. 

In this episode we reinforce the students’ understanding of the relationship between the percentage, the part, and the whole, with problems that also reflect the delicate nature of operations on percentages.

What makes it great?

The interactive tool is engaging and allows children to visualize percentages.

The visuals make the abstract concept of percentages more concrete. The episode gives children a role in Loomy’s story, making it relevant to the children, and motivates an otherwise dry topic by exploiting technology and allowing children to learn by doing.

The questions reinforce the meaning of percentage as a proportional part of the whole.

Children must employ critical thinking to recognize the meaning of “the whole'' in any given situation. The episode also seeds ahead to percentage of a percentage by looking at how the whole changes with each percentage taken.

The questions inspire insights and address misconceptions.

For example, children can realize that adding percentages only makes sense if they are percentages of the same whole. Additionally, many questions have multiple solutions and allow children the freedom to express multiple strategies for thinking about the problems–they can really follow their own journey.

Consonance with Our Pedagogical Principles

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