Grade 6 · Math · Lesson 16

Real-world Percent Problems

Percents are everywhere in real life: discounts on shirts, tips at restaurants, sales tax at the till, savings into a piggy bank, and reports about how many students passed a test. Every real-world percent problem comes down to three quantities — the WHOLE, the PERCENT, and the PART. If you know any two, you can always find the third. The hard part is reading the words carefully so you set up the right calculation.

What this lesson teaches

1Solve real-world percent problems involving discounts, tips, sales tax, and savings
2Use percents to find a missing whole from a known part and percent
3Decide whether a problem asks for the percent amount or the total after adding or subtracting it
4Estimate answers with benchmark percents like 10%, 25%, and 50% before computing

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