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What Comes Next?

Being Explicit About Patterns

Laura Marlowe

I have learned that it is important for me to take an active role in helping my stu-
dents who struggle with mathematics. Instead of waiting for them to discover
concepts on their own, I think about the kind of support each student needs. Are
they having difficulty getting started? Do they understand the problem or the
task? Do they understand both the directions and the goals of the activity? Can I
restate the directions or questions to make the goals and concepts more explicit?
Can I provide the right support or scaffold? Can I give them the supports in small
enough bits so I don’t overwhelm them?

Patterns: A Central Mathematical Idea

A major objective in kindergarten mathematics is constructing, recognizing, de-
scribing, and extending repeating patterns. Patterns are an essential part of math-
ematics. We want students to expect regularities in the mathematics they do and
to look for and use patterns when they solve problems, using strategies such as
skip counting, for example. Over the years, I have noticed that recognizing and
creating patterns can be challenging for some children. Many young children
have experienced patterns in their lives but cannot identify the repeating parts.
In addition, I have found that students who have difficulty with patterns often
have difficulty with making sense of number and operations, perhaps because they
do not see patterns in their work with numbers. So it is important to get students
comfortable identifying and working with patterns starting in kindergarten.
Much of the support I provide to students who struggle with patterns focuses
on helping them:

• understand that a pattern is a regularly repeating unit


• figure out what comes next in a pattern


• begin to discover the structure of a pattern by identifying the unit that repeats