Increase Or Decrease

This worksheet gives students a straightforward introduction to percent change by asking them to compare an original value with a new value, decide whether the amount went up or down, and then calculate the percentage of that change. Students work with pairs such as 20 changing to 25, 40 changing to 30, 75 changing to 90, and 160 changing to 184, so they get repeated practice with both increases and decreases instead of seeing only one type. The activity strengthens subtraction, percent calculation, decimal conversion, division, number sense, and comparison while reinforcing the very important idea that percent change is always measured against the original value. It is especially useful for grades 6-7 students who are beginning percent increase and decrease and need a dependable routine they can use before moving into prices, populations, statistics, and other real-world applications.

Learning Goals

• Find the Amount of Change: Students subtract the original and new values to determine how much the quantity changed.
• Identify Increase or Decrease: Learners decide whether the new amount is greater than or less than the original amount.
• Calculate Percent Change: Students divide the amount of change by the original value and multiply by 100.
• Round When Needed: Learners practice rounding a percent change to the nearest whole percent when the calculation does not come out evenly.

Classroom & Home Use

• Easy for Parents to Explain: A useful routine is, “Find how much it changed, divide that change by where it started, and then turn the result into a percent.”
• Balances Increases and Decreases: Students practice both directions, helping them understand that percent change is not automatically an increase.
• Builds Strong Number Sense: Comparing the original and new values helps children predict whether the answer should describe growth or decline.
• Prepares for Everyday Math: This skill appears later in sale prices, price increases, populations, grades, sports statistics, and financial math.
• Flexible for Practice: The worksheet works well for homework, centers, independent review, intervention, or homeschool lessons.

The key idea in this worksheet is that the original value is the starting point, and that starting point is what the change must be compared against. Subtraction, division, decimals, percentages, increase, decrease, and number sense all work together as students solve each pair. For parents, a simple example is 20 increasing to 25: the amount of change is 5, and 5 is one-fourth of the original 20, so the percent increase is 25%. That explanation helps students understand why they divide by 20 rather than by 25. In classroom and homeschool settings, this worksheet builds a strong foundation for percent change and helps students avoid one of the most common mistakes-using the new value instead of the original value in the calculation.