Patterning is one of my favourite units so I definitely enjoyed this week's math class. My Grade 5 practicum class has just finished working on this unit and I know the students enjoyed it. A month ago, they were assigned an introductory patterning task that they had a lot of fun with. They were put into groups and were asked to come up with 3 different patterns (increasing, decreasing and repeating) using drama and movement; no pen and paper. I could see the students bringing out their creativity and working together collaboratively. It was definitely a fun task to introduce patterning to the class.
In math class this week, we worked on a few different activities. For the first activity, we had to choose a piece of paper from a bag that stated a rule for a pattern. We then had to describe the pattern by stating an input and an output number, and our group members had to guess what the rule is. We each took turns trying to guess each rule. They were really easy at first, but then started to get a little more difficult as there was multiplication and addition involved. You had to multiply and add to the input number in order to get the output number. This became a little more of a challenge.
The second activity we did involved choosing a pattern rule, and then we had to use coloured tiles to represent our pattern to at least input 3. Below is an image of one pattern I created. Please disregard my photoshop skills, as I realized after I took the picture that I added one too many tiles!
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| Image by Yasmine Khaizaran |
This pattern was a little difficult to build as the numbers were increasing a lot, and I was running out of tiles to use! You can see that by multiplying the input by 6 and then adding 3, you end up with a big output number. For the first group of tiles, the input was 1 and the output was 9. The second group: the input was 2 and the output was 15. The final group: the input was 3 and the output was 21. We learned that it is important that students look at patterning with input and output numbers, and to find patterns this way by creating a T chart. We want students to think algebraically and finding a relation horizontally (input to output) instead of just observing the output numbers to find a pattern rule.
After each of us created our own pattern with the coloured tiles, we did a gallery walk around the class and tried to figure out the pattern rules for our classmates creations. Below is a picture of my colleague James' patterned creation. I thought the way he stacked the tiles was cool!
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| Image by Yasmine Khaizaran |
Hi Yasmine,
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see that you really enjoy patterning. I hope that the patterns aren't too hard to see inside the math cave! Maybe you can can shed some light on the tips and tricks to patterning for someone like me who isn't that great with them. I really like the activity that you've outlined in your blog post. The integration of the drama aspect is a phenomenal demonstration of how we as teachers can "jumeler" two completely different subjects.
Great post!