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6. Ratio, Rate, Proportion

Develop understanding of proportional relationships before teaching computational procedures.

Proportional thinking—understanding multiplicative relationships between quantities—is essential for more advanced work in mathematics. Teachers should develop students’ understanding of proportional reasoning before teaching the cross-multiplication algorithm as a procedure for solving proportions. Teachers can make connections among problem contexts involving ratios, rates, and proportions, and discuss which ones can be solved most easily with cross-multiplication.