TEACHER: How could you explain it to him? Why isn’t it a pattern?
CHAD: It doesn’t keep going. It doesn’t repeat. It should be blue, yellow,
red, yellow—blue, yellow, red, yellow, and so on.
TEACHER: Can you show Rashid what the pattern should be?Chad proceeded to build the blue, yellow, red, yellow. Then all three of us said
the pattern and occasionally I asked, “What comes next?” while we were actually
looking at the pattern in front of us. Chad then took his turn and built a pattern
with the repeating unit: yellow, green, yellow, blue. I suggested that we stop here
and name the tiles (yellow, green, yellow, blue).“Let’s repeat this much,” I said,
(pointing to each one: yellow, green, yellow, blue). “We’re going to repeat this part
again” (yellow, green, yellow, blue).“What would come next?” Rashid still could
not identify what came next. So I asked Chad to make a different pattern. Chad
made a pattern with yellow, green, red as the unit. “Let’s look at how this pattern
starts,” I said.
This was a simpler pattern than Chad’s last pattern—a yellow, green, red
(ABC) pattern instead of yellow, green, yellow, blue (ABAC)—so I thought this
might be a better place to begin with Rashid to explicitly work on identifying the
pattern. I decided it might help Rashid to have him “name” the color and touch
each tile as he said the name.
TEACHER: What color is the first tile?
RASHID: Yellow.
TEACHER: Put your finger on it as you say yellow. What color is next?
RASHID: Green.
TEACHER: Let’s say that much together.
RASHID ANDTEACHER: Yellow, green.
TEACHER: Let’s keep going. What color is next?
RASHID: Red.
TEACHER: Alright. Let’s start at the beginning and go that far. Remember
to touch the tiles as you say the colors.
RASHID: Yellow, green, red.
TEACHER: Keep going!
RASHID: Yellow, green, red.
TEACHER: What color do you think comes next? What’s under the cup?
[Rashid gives me an unsure look.] Let’s start from the beginning again and see
what happens.
RASHID ANDTEACHER: Yellow, green, red, yellow, green, red... [I pause.]
Rashid: Yellow.
TEACHER: Let’s see if you’re right. Chad, lift up the cup that is hiding the
next tile.What Comes Next?