Mathematical Emphasis
Investigation 1—Exploring Patterns

• Observing and describing attributes
• Recognizing and describing a pattern
• Creating and extending patterns
• Predicting what comes next in a pattern

Investigation 2—What Comes Next?

• Recognizing a pattern
• Constructing and extending a pattern
• Reading a pattern
• Recording a pattern
• Predicting what comes next in a pattern
• Identifying the unit of a pattern

Investigation 4—Pattern Borders

• Making a linear pattern in a rectangular frame
• Making and comparing patterns that use the same two variables of color
• Recording patterns

Tips For Helping At Home
Talk about patterns at home!

• Look for patterns in the environment. Where do you see patterns? How are patterns made? How do they use shape, color, size, position, or quantity? Can you find patterns in the music you hear or in the stories you read or tell?
• Look at the clothing in your child’s closet. Which items have patterns and which do not? Your child may want to sort his or her clothes into two groups: those with patterns and those without.
• Make patterns together. Lots of household items are fun to make patterns with: buttons, caps and bottle tops, coins, and keys are just a few. Take turns adding on to each other’s pattern.
• Try physical pattern routines with motions, such as clapping your hands and tapping your knees in a repeating pattern. Start a pattern and see if your child can predict what might come next. Reverse the game, can your child make a pattern for you to extend?

Vocabulary Terms

Color Tiles

One inch colored squares

Cubes

Interlocking plastic cubes that can be used to build trains (a length of interlocked units)

Extend Patterns

Students can recognize a pattern and continue on with it

Manipulatives

Objects that can be used to help solve problems

Pattern Blocks

Plastic colored shapes including triangles, squares, hexagons, diamonds (rhombus), and trapezoids

Predict Patterns

Children can recognize a pattern and correctly choose what comes next

Unit

A set of individual items that repeat ( aab , aab , aab )

Mathematics Vocabulary Web site

Mathematics Strategy—The Importance of Patterning

In this unit, students examine patterns and begin to analyze what relationships exist among the elements of the pattern and how that information can be used to predict what might happen next. One of the major ideas in this unit is that patterns are predictable and may have elements that alternate, repeat, increase or decrease.

Children learn to examine the structure of patterns for similarities and differences.

How are these patterns similar? How are they different?

Students construct concrete models of patterns using materials like cubes and pattern blocks. They learn to identify elements of sequential patterns like the example below.

Being able to decompose (break apart) a pattern into its repeating parts is an important mathematical idea. Mathematics has been called “the science of patterns” for it is often used as a language to describe and predict numerical or geometrical regularities.

Source: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space: Patterns, Trains, and Hopscotch Paths. Dale Seymour, 1998. (Pages I-16 and I-17)

Mathematics Game—What Comes Next?

Materials

Small materials to make a pattern (buttons, coins, shells)

4-6 cups

Playing the Game

1. Player 1 hides his or her eyes.



2. Player 2 builds a pattern with small objects by placing one item after another in a way that makes a pattern.



3. Player 2 covers the last 4-6 items with the cups and tells Player 1 to open his or her eyes.



4. Player 1 looks at the pattern and builds the part that can be seen.



5. Player 1 tries to guess what comes next in the pattern.



6. If Player 1 is correct, Player 2 removes the cup for that square.