The Missing Percent

This worksheet gives students a mixed set of original and new values and asks them to supply the missing percent change. Some problems appear as simple equations, such as 40 → 50 or 80 → 60, while others are organized in a table, requiring students to find the percentage increase or decrease for each pair. That combination strengthens percent change, subtraction, division, decimal-to-percent conversion, table reading, number sense, and flexible problem solving while reinforcing the central relationship Percent Change = Change ÷ Original × 100. It is especially useful for grades 6-7 students who have learned the process and need straightforward fluency practice across both increases and decreases.

Key Learning Objectives

• Find the Numerical Change: Students subtract the original and new amounts to determine the difference.
• Compare the Change to the Original: Learners divide by the starting value rather than the ending value.
• Express the Result as a Percent: Students convert the quotient into a percentage and identify whether it represents an increase or decrease.
• Work Across Different Formats: Problems appear both as number pairs and in tables, helping students recognize the same skill in more than one presentation.

Educational Value

• Parent-Friendly Routine: Ask, “How much did it change, and what percent of the starting amount is that?”
• Good for Building Fluency: Repeated calculations help the percent-change process become more automatic.
• Balances Increase and Decrease: Students practice both directions so they do not assume every percent change means growth.
• Supports Independent Work: The uncluttered setup lets students focus on the calculation itself.
• Useful for Review or Homework: The worksheet fits naturally into centers, intervention, test preparation, or homeschool instruction.

This worksheet is valuable because it gives students repeated practice with the heart of percent change without adding extra story details. Original values, new values, subtraction, division, percentages, increase, decrease, and number sense all work together as students fill each missing result. For parents, a change from 90 to 72 is a useful example: the amount decreased by 18, and 18 is 20% of the original 90, so the result is a 20% decrease. In classroom and homeschool settings, this activity builds the fluency students need before moving into more complicated applications involving money, statistics, science, and real-world data.