Ratio and Proportion
This collection of resources supports the teaching of Ratio and Proportion in primary mathematics. These activities are linked to the year groups containing the corresponding content in the National Curriculum.
Here are some favourite activities selected by the NRICH team.
-
Orange Drink (Y6) A 750 ml bottle of concentrated orange squash is enough to make fifteen 250 ml glasses of diluted orange drink. How much water is needed to make 10 litres of this drink?
-
Rectangle Tangle (Y6) The large rectangle is divided into a series of smaller quadrilaterals and triangles. Can you untangle what fractional part is represented by each of the ten numbered shapes?
These are just a few of the activities on Ratio and Proportion that you can find on the NRICH curriculum pages.
The activities below, taken from the STEM Learning website, complement the NRICH activities above.
Ratio Makes Sense
A series of 12 activities which investigate ratio. They are aimed at older primary and younger secondary learners and include:
Pencils - recognising and describing simple ratios in the context of measurement
Walking to school - developing understanding of ratio using the context of distance
Under a magnifying glass - developing understanding of ratio by calculating the actual length of objects which have been enlarged by a scale factor
Cooking numbers - developing understanding of ratio by solving problems in the context of cooking recipes
Whiteboard Numeracy: Ratio and Proportion
This programme shows one way of illustrating ratio using ICT, though it could be presented using multi-link cubes instead. In the second lesson, children look at photographs of themselves that are out of proportion. They then investigate Leonardo da Vinci’s proposition that the length of our face fits exactly eight times into the length of our body using images of themselves to test this idea.
Ratio and Proportion
This series of interactive excel sheets explore ratio and proportion. The first sheet displays a series of rectangles shaded in two colours. For each diagram the given ratio and the simplified version can be revealed. The sheet also asks what fraction of the whole each colour makes up. The second sheet generates a series of four equivalent ratios which can be revealed one value at a time. Other sheets support methods for solving ratio questions.
Ratio
This resource contains sixteen instant maths ideas covering a whole range of suggestions that may be used as starter questions, extension questions or probing questions to assess understanding. Areas covered include: scaling up recipes, investigating paper sizes, value for money, proportion questions, rates and what does '24 carat gold' mean.
