Eva's Maths Learning Story

Eva’s Maths Learning Story

“Do you like to work out problems and make your brain hurt? Well, I for one know I don’t”.

During maths we have been learning to find the whole number of a percentage. While we were doing this we got given this problem and this is what I did to work it out.

Rylee wants to find out how many students at Corinna School would like to do an activity involving skateboards and bikes in their lunchtimes. She sends a survey to 205 students. The survey results come back to her as percentages. 

How many students want to do each activity?

My starting point was to look at anything in the problem that could help to work out the problem or help me to understand the problem. 

What I already know: I already know that there are 205 students all together, 40% want to have a bike track and 60% want a skate park, so I have to find out what 40% is and what 60% is.

First I wanted to find out 10% because if I could find out 10% then I could times it by 6 and 4 to get 40% and 60%. So to find out 10% I decided to divide 10 by the full number 205.

205 DIVIDED BY 10 = 20.5.

Then I had to times 20.5 by 6 and 4 to get the 60% and the 40%.

20.5 x 4 = 82

20.5 x 6 = 123

I know that 40% is 82 students and 60% is 123, and if you do 82 + 123 = 205 and 205 is the total number of students so I know that I am not wrong.

Tip: I found out that when you are trying to find what the whole number of a percentages is, to make it a bit easier you have to divide the whole number by 10 to get ten percent, then what ever 10 percent is you would times it by the first number of the percentage that you are trying to find.

e.g 205 divide by 10 = 20.5 = 10%

20.5 x 6 = 123 = 60%

20.5 x 4 = 82 = 40%

The K.C skill that I used was participating and contributing. I used this skill by sharing my thinking with others and taking a risk by trying different ideas so that I might get closer to solving the problem.

Some things I found hard were trying to divide things and use multiplying to help me work out the problem. So I think I need to work on my division and multiplying so that it is easier for me.

Maths may not be everyone's favourite subject, but it is a good skill for everyone to learn because most things involve maths, so I try to learn as much of it as I can.