Ratio - Calculating Ratio - Planning

In a structured lesson plan tailored for Year 6 students, the focus is on calculating ratios during a spring term unit on Ratio and Proportion. The lesson commences with a starter activity designed to recapitulate prior knowledge, followed by a class teaching input where children are introduced to the concept of calculating ratios through worded problems. These problems require students to identify parts and wholes within a given scenario, and they are encouraged to use bar models as a visual aid to represent the information and assist with their calculations. For instance, a problem may involve a farmer planting crops at a certain ratio, and students are tasked with determining the total number of crops planted based on the given ratio.

Through a series of activities, the children apply their understanding of ratios to real-life contexts, such as preparing a vegetable salad or sorting a packet of lollies. They learn to manipulate ratios to find missing parts or totals by scaling up or dividing, and they practice these skills with the help of bar models. Group work and independent activities with differentiated worksheets are employed to deepen their reasoning and problem-solving abilities. The lesson concludes with a plenary session where key questions are addressed and common misconceptions are clarified. To reinforce learning, students reflect on the skills they have utilised, such as bar modelling, counting, comparing, division, and multiplication, and they make a commitment to remember the day's lesson. The lesson plan also differentiates between levels of understanding, with activities ranging from solving simple ratio word problems to more complex multi-step problems requiring the creation of their own bar models.