Patterns

When I taught pre-algebra, we introduced linear relationships in the context of patterns and I always felt that kids got a good handle on the idea of what it meant to be linear.  Writing down the definition does not really help the kids understand completely what it means to have a constant rate of change.  Extending a pattern, making a chart, and seeing a graph does a better job.

On Friday I did a station activity with my algebra 1 class.  As I was setting up the stations, some of them said how much they love doing station lessons.  Cool.

We did one quick one together as an example of what I was looking for. Then they worked with four different patterns, each at its own station:

Note: These patterns are all taken from CMP2 (what I used to teach pre-algebra)

As they moved around, kids filled out one of these for each pattern.  Since they were creating a graph, I printed them on graph paper.  Also because I'm slightly obsessed with printing on graph paper.

very sorry for the terrible picture here

Each station seemed to need about 7ish minutes. Some kids didn't get to finish each one so they are finishing them up for homework. I told them that as long as they had the next two figures drawn and the table created, they could do the rest at home. Just in case though, I gave each one a copy of the patterns as they left.  In hindsight, I could have just posted the patterns on the website instead of printing a sheet for each kid but I didn't think of that until they were almost all printed.  Oh well.

Downloads: pdf  doc

On Monday I plan to introduce a pattern project they'll be starting using Fawn's visualpatterns.org so stay tuned.  Monday is also my first SBG quiz with these kids so I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes too.