Pattern Generators

I like the theme of the first week of my Math for High School course to be teaching for creativity.

This semester's group did a nice job with Dan Meyer's Toast video. I had them ask questions and record what they noticed. There was a neat dichotomy: the WCYDWT responses were all pretty traditional math textbook questions. The what they noticed branched far afield, wondering what would make a good soundtrack, wondering about darkness of toast and toaster design.

We followed that with a workshop (I think based on an Esther Billings and Pam Wells workshop) based on verbalizing and algebrafying number patterns.

Is this a pattern?

The last workshop of the day was planned to be this, which in the past has been a pretty good activity:

Objective: TLW develop mathematical patterns from the teacher’s perspective.

Schema Activation: when (if you do) do you notice patterns in real life?

Focus: What we talked about in Class 01 was really curriculum. What are we going to teach? Here’s the NCTM’s take:

The Curriculum Principle
A curriculum is more than a collection of activities: it must be coherent, focused on important mathematics, and well articulated across the grades.  A school mathematics curriculum is a strong determinant of what students have an opportunity to learn and what they do learn. In a coherent curriculum, mathematical ideas are linked to and build on one another so that students' understanding and knowledge deepens and their ability to apply mathematics expands. An effective mathematics curriculum focuses on important mathematics—mathematics that will prepare students for continued study and for solving problems in a variety of school, home, and work settings. A well-articulated curriculum challenges students to learn increasingly more sophisticated mathematical ideas as they continue their studies. (From the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM for short), NCTM.  All these principles have expanded information and explanation at the NCTM website.)

As we discussed, there are small shifts and large shifts. This activity applies to both: it’s an easy activity that allows for creativity (subtle shift) but may lead to you designing your own problems and questions for students (big shift).


Activity: we have blocks. Play with them!
1. Make a pattern of images with the blocks. A successful pattern for this task is one in which the next shape is determined, or is reasonable.
2. Describe your pattern in words. What’s happening, what’s changing? What can you say about the next step compared to the previous? What will the 10th step be like? A general step?
3. Describe your pattern mathematically. What can you say about the next step compared to the previous? What will the 10th step be like? The Nth step?
4. What connections do you see amongst 1 (the visual), 2 (the verbal), and 3 (the symbolic or mathematical)?
5. Repeat as time allows.

Reflection: choose 2
• Was this task too open-ended? Does it need more structure?
• Was this task engaging? Was it mathematically worthwhile?
• What were the strongest or most interesting connections you saw in a step 4?

But we didn't have time for that! (Not to butter them up, but they were jamming on the toast and I didn't want to cut that short.)

So what we did was:

Schema Activation: whole class discussion - what makes a pattern a pattern?

Focus: Pattern blocks, make what you consider a pattern.

Activity:
1. Make patterns.
2. Put a piece of scrap paper by your pattern with a Y and an N.
3. Gallery walk. Put a hashmark by yes or no if you consider that a pattern or not.
4. Stop by someone else's pattern, add three blocks.

Reflection: whole class discussion about what happened.Record your personal definition of pattern as it is now.

I'm kicking myself now that I didn't take more pictures. Most students made repeating linear patterns, some tessellation patterns, one person made a circular pattern, and then there was...

This was the only pattern that students did not see as a pattern. It was described as just random fitting together, and someone asked about the yellow.  "They were supposed to be orange." And then the author shared how they were lines of blocks fit together. Another student shared how to her it was a skewed checkerboard. Then the class unanimously agreed it was a pattern. I thought that was really interesting and asked how they would verbalize it. Good descriptions followed. Could they capture it symbolically? No, not that I expected it. So I shared a bit about the wallpaper groups, and how mathematicians seek the power of good notation so they can symbolically manipulate. I also shared how I had thought the yellow was a pattern in a pattern.

The characteristics of patterns they thought most important was that it can be explained (there is an idea or structure) and someone who understands it can extend it or fill in a missing piece.

If one week determines a pattern, it's going to be a good semester!

Photo credit: The tremendous image up top is from Tanya Khovanova, in this post. The original question was rather brilliant: "Which one of these things does not belong?" Many thanks to Sue, who pointed out the author below.