Patterning in Grade 12

I’ve been invited to come work in a grade 12 class for a few days to work on patterning, reviewing linear and quadratic, and introducing exponential.

We did a few warm up patterns, and then tried these questions: are the patterns growing linearly or not.

Students got into it, drawing the missing figure, determining pattern rules, making tables and deciding if it’s linear or not. There was some debate about the growth in the 2nd pattern. There were some excellent conversations happening around the room.

Groups got into exploring the tables to see what happened when the x values are negative. They used their 2nd differences to help fill it in, or used their equations to calculate the y values for negative x.

Next we looked at this pattern that grows as a rectangle. We looked at patterns in the dimensions, and also how we can see 2 squares of the figure number, and 1 group of the figure number, so the equation is 2x^2+x.

Tomorrow we’ll introduce some exponential patterns then do an activity with blocks to show some graphical connections.