Percent Change Finder

This worksheet gives students a full percent-change routine in table form. Each row provides an original value and a new value, and students must first decide whether the value increased or decreased, then calculate the percent change and record both pieces of information. With pairs such as 24 to 30, 60 to 48, 80 to 100, 150 to 180, and 200 to 170, students practice both directions of change while working through a range of familiar percentages. The activity strengthens subtraction, division, decimal conversion, percent increase, percent decrease, table reading, and number sense. It is especially useful for grades 6-7 students who are ready to manage the entire percent-change process without each step being separately prompted.

Targeted Skills

• Determine Direction First: Students compare the original and new values to decide whether the situation shows an increase or decrease.
• Find the Amount of Change: Learners subtract the smaller value from the larger one to determine the size of the change.
• Calculate Percent Change: Students divide the amount of change by the original value and convert the result to a percent.
• Round When Necessary: Learners round the final percentage to the nearest whole percent when the division does not come out evenly.

Instructional Benefits

• Builds a Complete Routine: Students practice every part of the process from start to finish.
• Parent-Friendly Sequence: Adults can ask, “Did it go up or down? By how much? What percent of the starting number is that?”
• Keeps Work Organized: The table separates direction from the final percent, reducing confusion.
• Useful for Independent Practice: Students have enough structure to stay organized without being walked through every calculation.
• Great for Review or Assessment: Teachers can quickly see whether students understand both the direction and size of the change.

This worksheet helps students think of percent change as a complete story rather than a single formula. A quantity starts somewhere, moves up or down, changes by a certain amount, and that change can be measured as a percent of the starting value. Original values, new values, differences, percent increases, percent decreases, and number sense all work together as students complete the table. For parents, that step-by-step story often makes the topic much easier to explain than starting with a formula alone. In classroom and homeschool settings, this activity builds a strong percent-change routine that students can later apply to prices, population, sports, weather, science data, and financial math.