Repeating and Increasing Patterns
Warm-up
Show a circular arrangement of coloured tiles (no clear starting point). What pattern do you see? Where does the core start? This is harder than a linear pattern: students must look for the repeating unit without a left-to-right anchor. Discuss strategies.
Explore
Pattern stations: (1) Positional patterns: a grid where row 1 is one colour, row 2 two colours, row 3 three colours. Describe the rule. What does row 7 look like? (2) Increasing number patterns: 4, 7, 10, ?, ?, ?. Extend and describe the rule. Find the 10th term. (3) Cultural pattern replication: students recreate a simplified armband pattern from a reference image.
Consolidate
Practice
Students create one repeating and one increasing pattern, record both in three representations (objects, drawing, numbers), and write the rule in words. Exit ticket: what is the 8th term of the pattern 3, 5, 7, 9?
Exit ticket
Students create one repeating and one increasing pattern, record both in three representations (objects, drawing, numbers), and write the rule in words. Exit ticket: what is the 8th term of the pattern 3, 5, 7, 9?
The constant difference is 4 (each term adds 4). Next terms: 21, 25, 29. The 10th term: start at 5, add 4 nine times: 5 + 36 = 41. Or: list all 10 terms. Both methods work; the first is more efficient.
Core: 2 red, 1 blue = 3 tiles. 20 divided by 3 = 6 remainder 2. The 20th tile is the 2nd tile in the core = red. The circular arrangement makes no difference to the core-length calculation.