Working with Students and Patterns

1

• Working with Students and Patterns
• Provide scaffolding by beginning with concrete
  objects, where students use drawings, words, and
  symbols to recreate and extend the pattern
• Begin with simple, yet attainable patterns but
  progress rapidly to more complicated ones

2

• Work with students to recognize and describe,
  extend, and generalize ALL patterns whenever
  possible
• Couple this with class discussions where students
  examine similarities and differences within the
  pattern
• Require that students summarize their findings in
  writing
• Have students use their rule(s) to predict how
  the pattern will look for several stages
• Have students use their rule(s) to predict what
  each pattern will look like or what its value
  will be for some large stage number
• Ask students to find the appropriate stage number
  given a description or value of a particular
  pattern

3

• Incorporate the use of a table for each pattern