Another day in patternville

It's been awhile since I last blogged but we have been on our two week fall break.  It is quite nice to be apart of a balanced calendar.  The kids have been great getting right back into the swing of things Today in math class we are talking about patterns. From my previous blog post students were doing identifying non patterns and patterns. Now they are creating their own patterns for another group to solve. Take a look at the patterns below Once the groups finished they had to tell if it was a pattern, then tell the rule of the pattern and finally extend the pattern by three terms. Here are some of their work: 

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This had some very interesting results. I had some students unable to make patterns, and some students who only made repeating patterns.  The interesting part is when it came to explaining all students recognized if it was a pattern or not but some struggled to make them.  I found this interest because of they can recognize patterns they should be able to make them.  However, that is not the case, I wonder why? More work might be needed in explaining patterns and identifying key attributes of patterns.  Overall, this was a great exercise to help the students solidify their understanding with patterns.  Our next big problem is looking at how two patterns are a like and not alike (e.g. 2,4,6,8,10,... And 3,5,7,8,11,.....).  Stay tuned for more on patterns