Thinking Proportionally

Proportional thinking and reasoning is perhaps one of the least obvious of curriculum strands as well as, one of the most difficult as it requires a high level of critical thinking.  It is the strand of mathematics that requires students to be able to compare and make ratios and further, have the ability to mentally store and process several pieces of information.  Though this is maybe one of the least obvious of strands, it may also be one of the most used strands in everyday life.

The above picture is an example of a problem solving question that we attempted in class.  It really highlights just how prominent proportional thinking is in our everyday lives- especially when grocery shopping!  I think most of us, at least us students are always looking for the best deal when shopping.  Being able to compare quantities multiplicative is a mathematical process we have gained over the years maybe without noticing, as shown above through grocery shopping.  You would also be engaging in this type of math when you see the same product with different volumes and different prices, and in your head you compare the two and try to figure out the better value. 

Such problems I also encounter on a daily basis at my workplace, where I work as a server.  When making recipes, I am constantly needing to compare quantities given on packages to quantities im actually needing for a batch recipe.  This requires mathematical processing that has become automatic to me.  

This automaticity is the type of skill set we should strive to achieve in students.  Especially when dealing with proportional thinking, it bleeds into all other subjects.  This strand of the curriculum is so vital to student development and readiness for the real world.  It is the strand we often neglect, or think less of, yet might be one of the most important.  In my future placements, I will strive to place an emphasis on this strand and apply it to other subjects so students can see its real life application.