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Rafe Esquith: Five Tips to Help Children Develop Their Natural Gifts

#1343. M &M Percents

Mathematics, level: Middle
Posted Tue Oct 5 14:14:15 PDT 1999 by Eric Bushong (ebushong@saturn.nwiesc.k12.in.us).
Lake Central, Lake, Indiana, USA
Materials Required: One large bag of M&M's or enough small bags for every two students
Activity Time: Half to one class period
Concepts Taught: Determining percents and using a line plot, frequency distribution or other

*Have students pair up
*Pass out M&M's to students
*Using a line plot, frequency distribution or other form of statistic keeping, have the students count the different colors M&M's each group has.
*Have one of the students record on the board their results. You will have already made a chart.
*Have one of the students from each pair total the columns and the other total the rows. This will ensure you have the correct numbers.
*Have them determine the percent of each color M&M.
*Do they match the actual percents? Brown-30%,Red-20%,Yellow-20%,Orange, Green and Blue-10% each.
*You can also do a proportion problem.
-Conceal the total # of M&M's.
-Set up a proportion of, say "1 group's Reds/Total Reds = Total for that group/x". They dan then determine how many total M&M's there were.
*Then of course they will have to "dispose of the evidence".