Let’s explore patterns

Hello Sarah. Hi Michelle, how are you today?

I'm very well how are you?

Very good thank you.

We thought that we would come together today to explain some of the complexities around mathematical patterning. It seems like a really simple thing to notice and wonder about patterns, but sometimes little kids find this really tricky and it can be quite difficult to think about how to help them through identifying and noticing and extending and exploring patterns.

So we thought we'd come with some tips and tricks for teachers in classrooms and mums and dads and family at home.

Sounds great. Thanks for helping me.

So, Sarah, I've prepared a pattern underneath my sheet of paper and I wonder at the moment if you can workout what

my pattern is. If I said to you what block comes next, can you answer that question yet?

Not confidently.

So you'd need some more information?

I need some more information, yes.

What if I show you my next block, can you tell me what comes next now?

Not yet. I can start speculating, but I still don't really know confidently.

Ok. what if I reveal my next block?

OK, yeah, I'm starting to hypothesise a few things.

So what are you thinking it could be?

I'm thinking that it could be green if it's just a simple, alternating pattern. Yes, that's what I am thinking but I'm very keen to see if potentially there is different colour being introduced, or maybe another yellow.

So, you're thinking it could be green like this?

It could be, yes.

Could it also be something like red?

Definitely.

Could it also be something like another yellow?

Yes.

So at the moment we don't have enough information about the core of the pattern to see?

Yes.

I agree with you. What if I now do this?

OK yeah, I'm starting to get a bit more confident but I still don't fully trust it yet.

And that's actually really wise decision because what we want to see to say something has a mathematical regularity is we want to say that it happens over and over and over. So we've sort of seen yellow, green, yellow, green over and over, but we're waiting to see if we see it maybe for the third time to be more confident that it's definitely there. So you're starting to think it's probably yellow?

Yes, my hunch is yes.

OK and if I reveal again now we have green and now you're like yeah this is the pattern and so we could describe this as a yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, green and what would come next then?

Yellow.

Yellow and we have now seen that three times so he's sort of one chunk of the core, here is another representation of the pattern core and here is a third representation of the pattern core.

So that's why you feel a bit more confident, actually, to say I think this is now going to continue, my pattern will continue. Yes.

And so sometimes when we talk about patterns like this with kids, it's important to acknowledge that it's yellow, green, yellow, green and the attribute that's changing here is the colour. It's also important to talk about sometimes people refer to this as a one two pattern.

Sometimes that can be really tricky for students because we'd say one, two, and then we call this one again, which is really confusing when they're young and learning about attributes of counting principles, and so mathematicians would refer to this as an AB pattern. So I say AB AB, AB AB and that way it becomes generalisable so I could then say and build another pattern underneath where I say red, yellow, red, yellow, red, yellow, red, yellow. And even though the colour looks really different, they're actually the same pattern structure because if I squish them together I can see that in fact the core has two things in it before it repeats, but if I call it yellow, green it then makes it really hard for me to generalise out into a situation. Whereas if I say AB, I can still say it applies.

This is why we typically refer to them as AB patterns.

We can also think about this idea of moving from an AB structure like this into another AB structure as the idea is translating a pattern into something different. So this one is not too tricky because we're still working with blocks, but we could also start to do something with equipment at home, like a train and a train track, a train and a train track, a train and a train track and we can talk about that actually this is still an AB pattern, and again, if I make these spaces and do the chunking, that helps me see that in actual fact it is the same pattern core, it's now just represented in an entirely different way. You can also do it with, body sounds. OK. So you could do like a clap and a stomp on the ground, a clap and a stomp, a clap and a stomp. So...a simple thing that you can do is this, ask is how else could we represent the same pattern call using different equipment or sounds or movements in their bodies. I think kids would love that! They could go and find some of this other materials that they could use to replicate the same pattern. Why don't you try to make another AB pattern using this equipment? OK, I will.

Oh, I see, because it's got AB AB AB like our other AB patterns. You could even do something with movement too. So if you change these ones for red. You could do it like this up, down, up, down, up, down. So that the kids aren't always just having to think about colour, but they're looking at other attributes, and in this case their position.

Yeah. There's another way to represent it, vertical, horizontally, vertically, horizontally, vertically, horizontally, still AB AB AB, and so some of the questions that we can ask of students are things like - Now what would be next in my pattern and ask them to continue it.

So what would come next in your pattern that you are making?

It would be a vertical and a horizontal.

And then we can do things like saying - uh oh, something came out of my pattern, what might that now be? OK, so you would then sort of cover it or get them to close their eyes, is that what you're thinking?

Yes. And so this is much trickier for kids to see because the pattern core is disrupted, and so that's where it might be worth saying - Oh well, let's see if we aren't sure what comes here, let's separate the chunks that we can see like this. Yes, OK. And in actual fact, then I could move them and say they're exactly the same, and they're exactly the same and if I move this here, now I can see what's missing. Yes. I can put the piece in and then I can re-organise and re establish my pattern.

Brilliant. Have fun patterning mathematicians.