Today both year 8 groups were asked to discuss and solve a number of Algebraic patterning tasks. These started off with basic colour patterns and gradually built up to number patterns and representations where they needed to work out the rule/formula/relationship of that sequence.
Patterning is, "critical to the development of mathematical concepts and algebraic thinking and reasoning. General mathematical processes of representation, symbolization, abstraction, generalization and proof rely on initial pattern recognition and application in a variety of shapes, counting, spatial arrays or geometric patterns" (Bobis, Mulligan & al, 2013, pg 54).
As they worked in a group, it allowed every member of the group to contribute. In Group 3, one person made a suggestion of the relationship between the first three numbers in:
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, __
which helped others in the group to explore that idea further which eventually ended with the discovery of the pattern and the answer.
Below is a picture of some of the tasks I used today.
Oooh, lots of good thinking involved in these activities!
ReplyDeleteis the answer in number 3 ' b' - I have been looking at this one for ages !!
ReplyDeleteWow! I am definitely going to use this idea as way to explore patterning in Room 5. I especially like card 8 and card 9 :)
ReplyDeletethanks for sharing your work
Patterns are everywhere, I wondered why it was important to learn about them, now I know , thanks Miss Breen for sharing the learning that is going on. What great activities to help students learn is happening in our school , you not going to get bored pulling faces like those. When I was at school we would of got into big trouble for that.
ReplyDeleteWow this was an amazing Maths activity to get our brains working. We could do questions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. But we found number 6 really hard. Can you let us know if the answer is 33?
ReplyDeleteHi Miss Tuapawa - Yes the answer to number 6 is 33 as the pattern or rule with that task is to add together the last two digits to make the subsequent number - so of course 13 and 21 make 33 : )
ReplyDelete