Year 6 Understanding percentages worksheet

“What does percent mean?” is free to print, with no account. It is the first sheet in the Year 6 maths unit “Understanding percentages”, for children aged 10 to 11, and takes about 20 minutes.

Print it on A4. The child's pages come first; the answers, and what each wrong answer tells you, are on the grown-up page that follows. Weeks 25 to 26 of the year, 10 sheets in the unit.

Free sample · answers on the last page

What does percent mean?

Name: ____________ · Date: ____________
Year 6 · Maths · about 20 minutes
Answers are on the grown-up page

Today I can understand that percent means parts out of every 100, and show percentages in different ways.

A Look back3 min

1.
Half of 60 is
2.
7 tenths as a decimal is
3.
One quarter of 20 is

B Watch me, then you4 min

Out of 100 pupils, 35 walk to school and 65 do not. What percentage walk to school?

An empty school playground with a row of bicycles by the gate in late afternoon light

Watch me

The whole is 100 pupils, and the whole is always 100%.

35 out of every 100 walk, so 35 per cent walk.

35 + 65 = 100, so the other part is 65%.

Now you

1.
A bag has 100 sweets. 40 are red. What percentage are not red?

C Your turn6 min

Each row shows a whole. Write the percentage.

1.
3 tenths of the shape is shaded. That is %
2.
1 quarter of the shape is shaded. That is %
3.
75 out of every 100 cars are blue. What percentage are not blue?
4.
Out of 50 children, 25 have a pet. That is % of the children.

Say it out loud: What stayed the same in every row? Which part of each picture was the whole?

D Spot the mistake3 min

Ali says: “50% of 10 metres and 50% of 40 metres are both 5 metres, because both are 50%.”

1.
How long is 50% of 40 metres? metres

E Think deeper4 min

1.
Ravi’s bill is £20 and Sam’s bill is £200. Both get 30% off. Who saves more? Explain how you know.

How did it feel?

I can do it Nearly Not yet

For the grown-up

What does percent mean? · 2 minutes to read

Answers, and what a wrong one tells you

A

1. 30 If your child writes 6, they have divided by 10. Ask how many equal parts the bar shows. Two equal parts make a half.

2. 0.7 If your child writes 0.07, ask how many tenths are shaded. Seven tenths is 7 divided by 10, which is 0.7.

3. 5 If your child writes 4, they have found the number of parts, not the size of one part. Share 20 equally into 4 parts.

B

1. 60% If your child writes 40, they have found the red part, not the part that is not red. The whole is 100, so take 40 away from 100.

C

1. 30%

2. 25% If your child writes 4, they wrote the number of parts. The whole is 100%, so share 100 into 4 equal parts: 100 ÷ 4 = 25.

3. 25% If your child writes 75, they have repeated the blue part. Ask how much of the whole 100 is left after the blue cars.

4. 50% If your child writes 25, they wrote the number of children, not the percentage. The whole here is 50, and 25 is half of 50, so it is 50%.

D

1. 20 metres If your child writes 40, they have taken the whole instead of half of it. Half of the whole is 20. The same percentage gives a different amount when the whole changes.

E

1. Look for: Sam saves more because 30% of £200 is £60, while 30% of £20 is £6; the percentage is the same but the whole is different.

Words to use

Say“Before you work out a percentage, ask: a percentage of what, exactly?”

Instead of“Just say 'that's 30%, well done' and move on without asking what the whole is.”

After the sheet

Line up 10 buttons and mark 3 of them. That is 30% of 10. Then ask which is more: 30% of 10 sweets or 30% of 100 sweets, and talk about why.

Tick what your child got right in StudyDen. Anything missed comes back in a later Look back box, so there's no need to redo the sheet.

The rest of this unit

9 more sheets come with a StudyDen plan, in teaching order:

Percent, fraction, decimal(with a plan)
Percentages as fractions(with a plan)
Fractions into percentages(with a plan)
Half, a tenth, a hundredth(with a plan)
Building common percentages(with a plan)
Any percentage, in parts(with a plan)
Finding the whole(with a plan)
Working back from sale prices(with a plan)
Percentages in real life(with a plan)

Every Year 6 maths worksheet

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