Forty of the 100 1-blocks we see are green. The other sixty are teal.

We can check this fact visually by combining these blocks into a block-of-100.

Figure. 2

So in the clear block-of-100, we can clearly see that 40 of the 100 unit blocks are green, or that 40 percent of the larger block is green.

What about these 100-blocks? Are they 40 percent green?

What we can tell from this is that where the green units are in the 100-block doesn’t matter –– the only thing that matters is the total number of greens.

So all of the images we see are all have 40% green blocks –– even the images where we don’t have a block-of-100!

Activity

This can be used as a good activity for students –- give four groups of students the four blocks above, with green blocks mixed throughout. Have your students guess if all four blocks are the same or not! After giving them time to discuss, have the students reorganize their blocks to look like Figure 2!

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