Mindspark, now has a series of Super Tests, of which the upcoming one is on Percentages. For those of you who are unaware, the Super Test is a series of regular tests for individual subscribers (currently only for Grades 5, 6 and 7) that allow them to know their strengths and weaknesses in a particular topic while also providing practice.

Why is it called a ‘Super Test’?

Super Quick – Takes just 30 minutes.

Super Concepts – Covers a gamut of concepts.

Super Feedback – Provides instant feedback on your performance.

At Mindspark, we research into thousands of data points on a daily basis, make sense of that data for you, and try to improve how students everywhere learn Mathematics. If your child has studied or will study Percentages, here are some errors to look out for-

1. “It is not necessary to always write the % symbol”

A good place to spot this is in your child’s notebook. Notice how the % symbol disappears during the course of solving the question, only to mysteriously appear again beside the answer. Students have to be taught to appreciate the meaning of %.

 

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Encourage them to understand what it stands for, and to prevent errors as below…

2. “Increasing a number by x% is the same as increasing it by x”

This is an ever so popular understanding gap that we see in our students. An example would be as follows-

Q. What is 50 increased by 20%?

A: 20 B: 60 C: 70 
Can you guess what wrong answer the students would have most probably chosen? If you picked C, you were right- that was the most common wrong answer, picked by over 2000 (23%) students out of a total of about 9000 students! Only two thirds got this correct. Why do students make this error? Let us explore-
Students apply the concept of increasing a number by some percentage to mean addition and apply it to the only two numbers they see in the question- 50 and 20, to obtain 70. This also stems from many students tending to ignore the percentage symbol.

 Want to hear from our Educational Specialist?

3. “Shift the decimal point by two places to the left, and add the % symbol”

Decimal numbers are essential for multi-step calculations involving percentages. Students are often taught how to quickly convert between percentages and decimals- this rote method of understanding the transformation often leads to learning gaps, as illustrated by the below question-

Q. From the shaded portion of the figure given below, we can say that 0.9 is the same assaloni-2

A: 0.9% B: 9% C:90%
Again, can you estimate the number of students who got this right? About 1700 out of 13500 students chose B: 9%! This probably happens if a child forgets how many places the decimal point was to be “shifted”. Clearly, students need to learn that converting 0.9 to a percentage number would involve multiplying by 100. This can be verified by dividing by 100 to obtain the percentage equivalent.

Is your child ready for the next Super Test?

 

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Mindspark is adaptive and personalised to your child’s needs and hence diagnoses and successfully remediates all the errors highlighted above. Try Mindspark for 7 days here and watch your child fall in love with Maths. 

 

Educational Initiatives

Educational Initiatives

Founded by a group of IIMA alumni, with ample personal experience of educational institutions, Educational Initiatives (EI) is an effort to ensure every child learns with understanding.

Established in 2001, Educational Initiatives believes in making a difference in education through personalized learning and ensuring that students learn with understanding.

EI has over 15 years of expertise in education, with a deep understanding of child psychology and efficient methods of teaching, based on detailed research and a formidable database of student learning through ASSET.

Our detailed research has proven that children today respond to rote-based questions relatively well, however, they fail to answer unfamiliar or application based questions due to unclear core concepts.
Educational Initiatives

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