It’s crazy to me how much power some of the skills we teach really carry. Getting kids to understand proportions and how to solve for a missing value in proportions is one of those concepts that just keeps showing up. Understanding proportions helps students with so many other concepts. It shows up again when they learn about slope. I feel like the students who understand proportions have a much easier time understanding slope. When I was a kid, I enjoyed finding the patterns in things, and proportions have that type of pattern. Now, I love helping students to understand these patterns and watching the light bulb turn on. In this post I’ll share twelve activities that will definitely help students get the practice they need with proportions.
Last year I was working with a group of struggling 7th graders and we did so much practice with this that they grew into proportions experts. We practiced with proportions everyday for weeks until it became second nature for them. They really started to look at themselves differently because of the success they were having. In the post I’ll share some of the activities that we did and explain how we went from not understanding to mastery.
The list of activities
Worksheet and Target Game
Dunk Tank-Ratios and Proportions
Sugar Packets and Soft Drinks Performance Task
Let’s dive in
It’s time to dive in and see what each of these activities has to offer. Some of them work great for independent practice, while others work better for whole class practice. I have used them to learn & practice proportions, and then again later in the year for review. Practicing proportions can easily be done in fun ways because it’s a skill, not a deep complicated concept. Let’s look at some ideas and see what you think:
Mazes
My students learn and grow on a steady diet of mazes and when we were practicing solving proportions, we used them a lot. With mazes you can basically drill kids, but they think it’s a puzzle. If I don’t have a maze one day my students think that something must be wrong. Also, it works great as a way to start the class. Everyone grabs their maze as they enter the classroom and gets to work.
This set of 3 proportions mazes has students solve for x with two ratios separated by an equals sign. I encourage students to see if they can solve it without a calculator first. If that doesn’t work, then they cross multiply. The more practice they get the more automatic it becomes.
Want even more math mazes? Join the Maze of the Month Club and get a free, exclusive math maze sent right to your inbox each month. You’ll get started right away with a free integers maze, and then you’ll get the inside track on monthly mazes and other math goodies.
Yes! I want to join the Maze of the Month Club!
Can’t wait to see you there 🙂
Cootie Catcher
This cootie catcher partner activity goes at a slower pace, so I use it near the beginning of the unit. Students can play it as a duel against each other or they can play it together. To play, they have a little cootie catcher or some people call them fortune tellers. They fold it and then choose a character on the outside and a number on the inside just like when you use these to tell your fortune. Many students love the added fun that this brings to practicing.
Tic Tac Toe
I find that tic tac toe sheets work in different situations. You can have students use them to play tic tac toe. Also, you can use them as a simple practice worksheet.
When they play this proportions tic tac toe game, students work with a partner and take turns answering questions. The person who gets 5 in a row first wins. You can have them switch partners and try again. This type of game promotes math talk and gets the math out of their heads because they have to talk.
Quizizz
In our journey to perfect our mad proportion solving skills, we used Quizizz a lot. We actually completed one Quizizz activity per day and keep a record of our progress. Students would complete the questions and write their score in the interactive notebook. We looked for incremental improvement and most students saw it.
Quizizz is an online game where students get points for speed and accuracy. You can see how the whole class did on one page. They have a pretty exhaustive bank of quizzes they other teachers created. Here’s one Quizizz game we played, but you can find many more. Also, when setting up the game it has a feature where you can turn off the timer (I personally like to choose this setting so students focus on accuracy over speed). Then, you can easily assign it from Quizizz to Google Classroom, so students can find the link easily.
Proportions Maze Battle
If your students loved the maze above, then you might want to try the proportions maze battle. It has two mazes going down the page. The page actually has three pieces of paper taped together. The students start at the same time and they want to get to the end the fastest. They can ask the teacher to check it at any time. If they don’t ask until the end and then they have a mistake they have to go all the way back. I love the activity. It feels like American Ninja Warrior, but the middle school math version.
Math Games
This game combines good old fashioned practice with some awesome graphics and games. The student can choose between 8 different games to play. Then they just practice solving for x in a proportion. You can use this online resource time and time again. It also has a printable worksheet at the bottom of the page and has activities for a wide variety of topics. I really like the games Zombie Math and Math Muncher. I like trying the games so that I can talk to kids about what they are playing. The problems for this game are pretty basic.
Kahoot
Sometime you just need a game for the whole class, and students love Kahoot. The questions get displayed on the board and then each kid answers the question on their own tablet or computer. As the game goes students get points and move up and down the rank. One of my favorite parts is the reports features at the end. You can get a lot of formative data from this report. This Kahoot game has 10 problems and works perfectly at the end of class or as a review later in the year.
Worksheet and Target Game
The Math-Aids website creates worksheets to practice solving proportions (be sure to unclick all the options except monomial variable expressions). We rarely just do a worksheet in my classroom. Often when I need them to do some drilling I add a game like the target game. Basically, all you need is a whiteboard and a suction cup ball to make it work. You can read more about how to transform any worksheet into a fun review game by playing the target game here. With this particular worksheet you can actually design the worksheet. That means you can decide which types of problems you want on it. 
Coloring Page Freebie
Sometimes kids needs brain breaks, and I like to use coloring pages for that. When I create them I try not to make the coloring page too big because I don’t want it to take too long to color. I find that some students don’t want to color, but I just require it and it actually works to give them a break. This proportions coloring page activity includes 8 solving for x in a proportion problems. It wouldn’t take students a long time to complete, but it works great for a review activity. You can download it for FREE here.
Dirt Bike Proportions
This dirt bike proportions game from Math Playground works best for beginners on this topic. Also, I use it with my math lab students as a way to review. The questions are very basic, but they give the kids a fun way to practice. One of my colleagues has big sticky note paper hanging in her room and keeps a list of high scores. This gives her a chance to have a little competition between classes. That would work great with this game.
Dunk Tank-Ratios and Proportions
I find that this dunk tank ratios and proportions activity from PBS Learning works for fast-finishers that have a long attention span. Within a series of short videos they get to answer questions and earn points. In the end they get to dunk one of the characters in a dunk tank. I could see how some kids would like this and that it would be rather difficult for others.
Sugar Packets and Soft Drinks Performance Task
I tried this sugar packets and soft drinks activity from Math Equals Love with my students in summer school one year. They loved it! And I loved that they got to see math in a very relevant way. You can adapt this for your class depending on how much time you want to spend. Students look at different bottles of soda and compare the amount of sugar. They have to figure out how to compare the amount of sugar using proportions. Also, they get to see how much sugar is in a soda (which will shock them). I would suggest having some bottles of soda and sugar packets handy. Then students can really see what you are talking about.
Try one thing
So, this post has a lot of ideas for you to try, and that can feel a bit overwhelming sometimes. I would suggest that you just try one of them. Add something to your tool box and see how the kids react. Remember that just because these activities are fun doesn’t mean kids aren’t practicing. If you can engage students more by adding some novelty, then their math practice will give them more of a boost. Have fun out there teaching math!
Thanks so much for reading! Until next time.
