Simple Percentage Calculations (Trading)
This topic covers 4 learning steps, guiding your child from the basics through to confident problem-solving. Each step includes a worked example and adaptive practice questions.
What Your Child Will Learn
- Percentage as Parts of 100
Connect percentages to trading contexts - Find 10% and 50% of Prices
Quick percentage calculations for prices - Simple Discounts
Calculate sale prices with percentage discounts - Challenge — Discount Shopping
Multi-item discount calculations
Common Mistakes
- Confusing profit with revenue (thinking the selling price is the profit, without subtracting the cost)
Profit = selling price − cost price. If you buy something for £20 and sell it for £30, the profit is £10, not £30. Use concrete examples: "I bought lemons for £2 and sold lemonade for £5 — my profit is £3." - Calculating percentage profit based on the selling price instead of the cost price
Percentage profit is always calculated from the COST (what you paid), not the selling price. If you spent £20 and made £5 profit, the percentage profit is (5 ÷ 20) × 100 = 25%.
Tips for Parents
- Set up a mini "business" scenario: "You buy sweets for 50p and sell them for 80p. How much profit per sweet? What percentage profit?"
- Use pocket money: "If you saved £10 and earned £2 interest, what percentage did you earn?"
- Discuss real sales: "This shop says 30% off — if the original price was £50, what do you actually pay?" Work through it step by step.
- Make it a game: give your child £1 of play money to "invest" in toy items. Sell them back at different prices and calculate profit or loss each time.
Key Words
- Profit — The money you make after subtracting what you spent — selling price minus cost price.
- Loss — When you sell something for less than you paid — the opposite of profit.
- Cost price — The amount you originally paid for something.
- Selling price — The amount you sell something for.
- Percentage profit — Profit shown as a percentage of the cost price — (profit ÷ cost price) × 100.
Where This Fits
Before this topic: Children should be able to find percentages of amounts and understand basic subtraction of money.
After this topic: Simple trading problems lead to more complex percentage increase and decrease, working with VAT, comparing deals, and financial literacy in Year 6 and beyond.
How MathCraft Teaches This
In MathCraft, Simple Percentage Calculations (Trading) is taught through the Money, Data & Measure adventure track. Your child follows guided lessons with friendly characters, works through examples step by step, then practises with questions that adapt to their level.
The adaptive engine tracks mastery across all 4 steps, revisiting concepts your child finds tricky and advancing when they're ready. Parents can see detailed progress in the Parent Dashboard.
Practise Simple Percentage Calculations (Trading) with MathCraft
Step-by-step lessons, worked examples, and adaptive practice — all wrapped in an adventure game your child will love.
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