Percent sign

The percent sign (%) is a little symbol that we use to talk about parts of something. It's like a special way of saying "out of 100." Let's say you have a big bag of candy with 100 pieces inside. If you take out 20 candies, the percent sign can tell you what portion of the bag you took.

The percent sign looks like a little "c" with two dots on top of it, and we write it right after a number. When you see it, it means we are talking about a part of a whole. We can also say it out loud like "percent" or "per-" followed by a number.

For example, if you eat 10 candies from the bag of 100, we can say that you ate 10%. This means you ate 10 out of 100 candies, which is like eating 10 parts out of 100 parts. It's like taking a small piece of a cake when the whole cake has 100 pieces.

We can use the percent sign to talk about lots of things in our everyday life. Like if you got 90% on your favorite game, it means you got 90 out of 100 points possible. Or if your teacher said you answered nine out of ten questions correctly, that's also 90%.

So the percent sign helps us compare how much of something we have compared to the whole thing. It can be used to talk about parts, scores, discounts when shopping, or even how likely something is to happen. Just remember, it's like talking about parts of a whole using a special little symbol!