standard_description: Write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers.
problem_activity: Activity
In this activity, students use the area measures from the previous task to solve problems about the amount of painting time, using their understanding of ratio, rate, and percentage along the way. The problems can be approached in a number of ways, giving students additional opportunities to model with mathematics (MP4) and choose their tools (MP5).
Launch
Give students quiet think time to complete the activity and then time to share their work and solutions with a partner. Ask students to be ready to explain their partner’s strategy to the class (MP3).
Student Facing
After buying the supplies, you start painting the east wall. It takes you 96 minutes to put two coats of paint on that wall (not including a lunch break between the two coats).
Your friend stops by to see how you are doing and comments that you are 25% finished with the painting. Are they correct?
Your friend offers to help you with the rest of the painting. It takes the two of you 150 more minutes of painting time to finish the entire room. How much time did your friend save you?
Student Response
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Anticipated Misconceptions
Some students may try to account for the amount of time that it takes the paint to dry between applying the first and second coat. Point out the the problem is only referring to the painting time, not the drying time.
Activity Synthesis
After students have conferred with their partners and checked their solutions (which for this activity is important, since a correct answer to the first problem is needed to find a correct answer to the second problem), debrief as a class. Invite students who thought their partner used a particularly efficient strategy to share.
In the first problem, students may solve it by figuring out that 3 square feet is 1% and scaling it to 72 square feet to correspond to 24%. If this was the dominant strategy in the class, make sure to emphasize how students can solve this problem by calculating
\(\frac{72}{300} \boldcdot 100\)
directly.


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