Game Gains

This worksheet uses sports statistics to make percent increase and decrease feel active and easy to interpret. Students compare before-and-after values for basketball points, soccer goals, free throws, tennis wins, baseball hits, volleyball serves, swimming laps, football passing yards, successful shots, and race times. For each statistic, students determine whether the value increased or decreased and then calculate the percent change using the original value as the base. The activity strengthens percent change, subtraction, division, sports statistics, data analysis, number sense, and interpretation while giving students repeated practice with changes that can be viewed as either improvement or decline depending on the situation. It is especially useful for grades 6-7 students who enjoy applied math and need practice analyzing percentage changes in numerical data.

Targeted Skills

• Compare Sports Data: Students identify the before and after values for each performance statistic.
• Classify the Change: Learners decide whether the numerical value increased or decreased.
• Calculate the Percent Difference: Students find the change, divide by the original amount, and convert the result to a percent.
• Interpret the Result Carefully: Learners recognize that a numerical decrease is not always “bad”-for something like race time, a lower number could actually represent improvement.

Instructional Benefits

• Sports Give the Numbers Energy: Performance statistics provide an engaging context for repeated percent-change calculations.
• Easy for Parents to Discuss: Ask, “How much did the statistic change, and what percent of the original amount is that?”
• Builds Data Interpretation: Students practice understanding what the percentage says about performance rather than only finding a number.
• Encourages Deeper Thinking: Race time reminds students that an increase or decrease describes the numbers, not automatically whether the outcome is better or worse.
• Flexible for Practice: The worksheet works well for centers, homework, sports-themed lessons, review, intervention, or homeschool instruction.

This worksheet helps students see percent change as a tool for comparing performance over time. Sports statistics, original values, new values, differences, percent increases, percent decreases, and number sense all work together as students analyze each row. For parents, a change from 40 free throws made to 50 means an increase of 10, and 10 is 25% of the original 40, so the statistic increased by 25%. The sports context also creates a useful discussion about meaning: a decrease in race time may actually be a positive result even though the numerical change is labeled a decrease. In classroom and homeschool settings, this activity strengthens percent-change skills while building better data reasoning and interpretation.