1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Number & Operations-Fractions.
CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.A.1 Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n × a)/(n × b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.
CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.A.2 Compare two fractions with different numerators and different denominators, e.g., by creating common denominators or numerators, or by comparing to a benchmark fraction such as 1/2. Recognize that comparisons are valid only when the two fractions refer to the same whole. Record the results of comparisons with symbols >, =, or <, and justify the conclusions, e.g., by using a visual fraction model.
CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.C.6 Use decimal notation for fractions with denominators 10 or 100. For example, rewrite 0.62 as 62/100; describe a length as 0.62 meters; locate 0.62 on a number line diagram.
CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.C.5 Express a fraction with denominator 10 as an equivalent fraction with denominator 100, and use this technique to add two fractions with respective denominators 10 and For example, express 3/10 as 30/100, and add 3/10 + 4/100 = 34/100.

2. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population?
© Ocean/Corbis
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population?
May is National Bike to Work Month, with many states, counties, and cities celebrating an entire week, or calling out a single day to encourage commuters to hop aboard their trusty pedal-powered steeds and get to work on two wheels.
As of 2012, only one percent of the U.S. population rode a bike to work regularly. That may seem a surprisingly low statistic, but commutes by bicycle are up by 50 percent since And in our nation’s largest cities, where bike commuting is arguably more realistic for many, bike commuters have increased by more than 90 percent on average.
While riding a bicycle to work is still an anomaly in the United States, it’s common in some cultures. Consider that the most popular vehicle of any kind in the world is a Chinese model bicycle called the Flying Pigeon. The most recent count has some 500 million Flying Pigeons on the road the world over. Even Toyota and General Motors would welcome those numbers.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 1
Web Search
What does a percentage mean? How big is the entire American population that we’re taking a part of? 2
Web Search/
Thinking
How would you represent the amount of people who currently bike to work in the U.S. as a fraction? 3
How many Americans currently bike to work? 4
How could you represent the number of Americans who currently bike to work as a decimal? 5
What is the mathematical difference between 1% and 2%? Hypothetically, if you knew what 1% was, how could you figure out what 2% would be?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 1
Web Search
What does a percentage mean? How big is the entire American population that we’re taking a part of? 2
Web Search/
Thinking
How would you represent the amount of people who currently bike to work in the U.S. as a fraction? 3
How many Americans currently bike to work? 4
How could you represent the number of Americans who currently bike to work as a decimal? 5
What is the mathematical difference between 1% and 2%? Hypothetically, if you knew what 1% was, how could you figure out what 2% would be?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 1
Web Search
What does a percentage mean? How big is the entire American population that we’re taking a part of?
(Possible queries: “what is a percentage?”, “what does a percentage represent?”, “how big is the American population?”, “how many people live in the U.S.?”)
From
In mathematics, a percentage is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. It is often denoted using the percent sign, "%", or the abbreviation "pct.” For example, 45% (read as "forty-five percent") is equal to 45/100 or 0.45.
From
Answers will vary depending on the day, but roughly 318,000,000 people live in the U.S.

8. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 2
Web Search/
Thinking
How would you represent the amount of people who currently bike to work in the U.S. as a fraction?
(Possible queries: “size of U.S. population”, “how many people live in the U.S.?”)
From
Answers will vary depending on the day, but roughly 318,000,000 people.
Students should understand that a percentage is a fraction that’s out of 100. Therefore, 1% is equal to the fraction 1/100. To find what 1% of the U.S. population is, they should recognize that the denominator would represent the entire population. They can set up an equation like the one below and solve, either by hand or by using the Bing Search Bar as a calculator.
1/100 = x/318,000, 000
X = 3,180,000
So the fraction of people who bike to work is 3,180,000/318,000,000 or 1/100.

9. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 3
Web Search/
Thinking
How many Americans currently bike to work?
(Possible queries: “size of U.S. population”, “how many people live in the U.S.?”)
Students should recognize that they need to find what 1% of the total American population is. If it helps, they can think of 1% as a fraction: 1/100. They would first need to look up how many people currently live in the U.S.
From
Answers will vary depending on the day, but roughly 318,000,000 people.
They then need to find what 1% (or 1/100) of this amount is. They can solve this in a variety of ways, such as the example below:
1/100 = x/318,000, 000
X = 3,180,000
Currently, approximately 3,180,000 Americans bike to work.

10. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 4
Web Search/
Thinking
How could you represent the number of Americans who currently bike to work as a decimal?
(Possible queries: “convert percentage to decimal”, “what is 1% represented as a decimal?”, “difference between percentage and decimal”, “convert fraction to decimal”)
Online resources about decimal, fraction, and percentile conversion such as the one found here: may be helpful to students to start thinking about the different ways the same amount can be represented.
Students should recognize that a percentage represents an amount out of 100, so 1% is equivalent to 1/100. To express this fraction as a decimal they can think about what they’ve learned in base ten, or use an online conversion calculator (Possible query: “convert fraction to decimal”) to find that 1/100 can be represented as (From

11. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population? 5
Web Search/Thinking
What is the mathematical difference between 1% and 2%? Hypothetically, if you knew what 1% was, how could you figure out what 2% would be?
Students should think about how 2% would be double 1%, so in order to find what 2% of the American population would be, they would just need to multiply it by 2.
In other words, if y = 1% of the American population
y x 2 = 2% of the American population

12. How many more Americans would need to bike to work to bring the number who do so up to 2% of the population?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.
Students should pull together the information they have gathered to recognize that 2% of the American population would be double what 1% is; in other words, they need to multiply this amount by 2. They should have found that the total American population is around 318,000,000 and 1% of this is 3,180,000. Therefore, 2% of the American population would be 6,360,000. Approximately 3,180,000 more people would need to bike to work to bring the total percentage of Americans who do so up to 2%.