By asking Rashid to name each cube in a sequence, first, next, and so on, I rein-
forced the concept of the repeating unit. Having him physically break the cubes
apart and seeing that each unit is the same (or not) brought home the idea that
he was looking for the chunk that repeats over and over again. By saying the
words out loud while physically breaking off the cubes, he got a feel for the pat-
tern, and his voice almost instinctively said what came next.
Reflections
In thinking about strategies for helping students know what a pattern is, predict
what comes next, and identify the repeating unit of a pattern, I realize that espe-
cially with my students who struggle, I need to take an active role in making ac-
commodations. Some strategies I use include:
- providing repeated opportunities for practice
- verbalizing each move in a game along with the student, in addition to
speaking/using words to describe the pattern - asking specific questions to help make what they are looking for explicit;
for example, to help students identify the repeating unit, I asked, “Where’s
the part that repeats? Where do you start over?” - asking the students to say the pattern out loud
- asking the students to touch each object in the pattern as they say the word
- providing a variety of contexts and materials so that these students can
flexibly apply their knowledge - reviewing the concepts we have practiced in the small groups during our
large group time and asking the students who struggle to participate with
my support
I use these same strategies throughout all of our units of study, particularly for
my students who are struggling. I work with these students in small groups to give
them extra practice, for example, more opportunities to play games to make sure
they understand the underlying mathematical concepts. In our work with count-
ing games, students might lose track of where they started, which spaces to count,
and where to stop. So I might repeat students’ moves aloud, having the student
touch each space as I say the words. “So you were at 3, you rolled a 4, so we move
to 4, then 5, then 6, then 7, now you landed on 7.” After a few rounds of this
modeling, I might ask the students to verbalize their moves as they move the
game pieces. To work on the counting sequence, we do a lot of oral counting so
they can hear the correct order of numbers, and the students have many oppor-
tunities to count all through the day.
MAKINGMATHEMATICSEXPLICIT