Taste the Rainbow - Learn the Patterns

Touch my candy... I dare you

Another week complete, another math class completed and so much more to learn! This week as a class we concentrated on Patterning and Algebra. This week's 3 hour class was filled with hands on work, presentations, a lot of a - ha moments but also included some frustrations and struggles with relearning Patterning and Algebra. 

I want to begin with first concentrating on the frustrations and the struggles my group and I all experienced in this week's class. In the picture above shows sixteen slips of cards. The instructions were to group them with their "teammates" in a way. There were equations, graphs, tables and the original model. Now, reading this one might say thats easy or let me try... 4 of the cards were blank. We had to appropriately match them together with their group of 4 and it had to all make sense! After thinking we completed it correctly we were then disappointed to hear that we indeed did not complete the task correctly- they did not match. Although we show signs of frustration, myself included, Pat reminded us that it was okay to make mistakes and that through the mistakes or struggles is how we actually learn. I was able to, through this task, identify with a student that may have a harder time understanding math until they are given further guidance and or motivation to identify where I went wrong and what I needed to do to fix it. This activity quickly showed me how much truth is behind the line that Pat has said consistently along the lines of behind struggle is growth. After struggling with this task and feeling silly about it our group fixed our mistakes and were successful. In addition to being successful we were also confident that although we may not get something at first, with patience and perseverance we will get there. Lesson well learned!

This week we had a variety of students presented and included candy in their presentations...

The below picture shows one of the teacher candidate's presentation on completing the patterns. An easy task and a delicious one as well! We were also given instruction to complete our own pattern. In addition to the skittles we also had a warm-up activity with making number patterns, writing next terms, and finding the rules for each of the number patterns provided. This is just one presenter out of the few that shared their activities with us but the skittles helped to make this one a memorable and tasty one!

Making Math Meaningful - Making Patterning and Algebra Fun!

Within this week's readings there were a variety of teaching tips and ways that an educator can encourage students through their learning of patterning and algebra. I think the idea that the book gave of students being "encouraged to create patterns as soon as they have an understanding of what patterns are" (Making Math Meaningful to Canadian Students, K-8, p. 364) is crucial for a teacher candidate to take away. Once a student can understand what a pattern is and they are able to create their own and learn the different types in addition then this specific strand to them will be successful and easy to achieve. If students are encouraged to create their own they can understand what goes into a pattern and how to recognize it in others. I would, as a teacher, let students make their own and share them with their fellow classmates to complete. This would create a diversity in the patterns the students are creating and completing!

When it is all said and done..

Although this week's class was stressful because I found myself struggling, I can now look on it as a learning experience that I have gained. 

Hope to see you back here again and thanks for reading!

Emily