Ratio, Proportion & Rates of Change
This collection of resources supports the teaching of ratio, proportion & rates of change in secondary mathematics.
Here are some favourite activities selected by the NRICH team.
- Mixing Lemonade Can you work out which drink has the stronger flavour?
- Olympic Measures These Olympic quantities have been jumbled up! Can you put them back together again?
- Thousands and Millions Here's a chance to work with large numbers...
- Place your orders Can you rank these sets of quantities in order, from smallest to largest? Can you provide convincing evidence for your rankings?
These are just a few of the activities on Ratio, Proportion & Rates of Change that you can find on the NRICH curriculum pages.
The activities below, taken from the STEM Learning website, complement the NRICH activities above.
Developing Proportional Reasoning N6
This resource outlines a method for solving problems involving proportional reasoning. There are four problems for discussion (pdf pages 7-8) and a set of ideas for situations to help students make up their own problems (pdf page 12).
Ratio Inquiry
The first file outlines some prompts for this investigation which may start as an open-ended task. The investigation may begin by looking at differences but is primarily concerned with multiplicative relationships. The other two files are printable grids suitable for student use.
Ratio
This resource has sixteen instant maths ideas (and suggested solutions) covering a variety of topics involving ratio and proportion. They may be used as starter questions, extension questions or probing questions to assess understanding. The topics convered include: scaling up recipes, investigating paper sizes, value for money, proportion questions, rates and what does '24 carat gold' mean.
Direct Proportion
This Excel file enables students to explore variables which are in direct proportion. The first sheet explains how values of one variable may be directly proportional to another variable or directly proportional to its square, square root or cube. Graphs of the different functions are drawn with students looking for a linear relationship.
