Percentage Picks

This worksheet gives students a multiple-choice way to practice percent increase and percent decrease. For each problem, students compare an original value with a new value, determine how much it changed, divide that amount by the original value, and then choose the correct percent increase or decrease from several answer options. Problems such as 40 to 50, 80 to 60, 50 to 65, 120 to 150, and 90 to 72 give students repeated practice with common percent-change relationships while also helping them recognize incorrect choices caused by using the wrong denominator or direction. It is especially useful for grades 6-7 students who understand the process and need faster, more independent practice.

Key Learning Objectives

• Find the Difference: Students calculate the amount the value increased or decreased.
• Use the Original Value: Learners divide the change by the starting amount, not the ending amount.
• Choose Increase or Decrease: Students decide which label correctly describes the movement from original to new.
• Compare Multiple Answers: Learners evaluate several options and eliminate choices that do not fit the numbers.

Educational Value

• Good for Test Preparation: Students practice choosing among similar answers instead of only producing a number from scratch.
• Easy for Parents to Support: Ask, “How much did it change, and what percent of the original amount is that?”
• Builds Mental Percent Sense: Familiar changes such as 80 to 60 or 90 to 72 can be related to common fractions like one-fourth or one-fifth.
• Helps Catch Common Mistakes: Distractors often reflect typical errors, making them useful teaching clues.
• Flexible for Practice: The worksheet works well for homework, centers, review, intervention, or homeschool instruction.

This worksheet helps students combine computation with judgment. Percent increase, percent decrease, original value, new value, subtraction, division, and number sense all work together as students select each answer. For parents, the useful habit is to estimate first: if 80 drops to 60, the change is 20, which is one-fourth of 80, so the answer should be a 25% decrease. That quick reasoning can help children reject incorrect choices before doing a full calculation. In classroom and homeschool settings, this activity strengthens percent-change fluency and confidence with multiple-choice problems.