GIC Leaders of Early Learning - Patterns and Relationships Universal Offer - Glow Blogs

Patterns and Relationships
          Universal Offer

GIC Leaders of Early Learning

Aims
•   To explore what pattern is
•   To explore the GCIP framework – pattern pages
•   Pattern and Maths -why teach it?
•   Developmental Stages
•   Explore 3 main types of pattern
•   Progression of pattern- linked to framework
•   How to support pattern teaching and learning of pattern
•   Online support

Reflection
• What is “pattern”?

What is pattern?

‘Pattern can be described as a systematic
arrangement of numbers or shapes which
follows a given rule.’
(Mathematics in Early Years Education, Smith and Price, 2012)

Reflection
• Where do you see pattern?
• How do we experience pattern every day?

Everyday Experiences of Pattern
Daily Patterns:                  Patterns in:
• Night follows day              • Number names
• Wash hands/snack/toilet/wash   • Songs/rhymes
  hands                          • Symmetry
• Baby feeding/change/sleep      • Word patterns – rhyme
                                 • Marking making – lines
• Days of the week
                                 • Nature/built environment –
                                   snowflakes, spiders web, plants,
                                   animals, windows, gates, fences
                                 • Time – seasons, days, weeks
                                 • Art – clothes, textiles
                                 • Cultural – rangoli, festivals

Reflection
•   What opportunities do you provide for pattern in your establishment?

•   Arts and Crafts: Painting, printing, drawing, cutting and sticking, and using stampers all give
    opportunities to look at pattern. Children should have a range of media such as paint, chalk,
    pens and pencils of different thickness, and means of applying the paint such as hands, feet,
    brushes, vegetables, sponges, combs etc. Different sizes and shapes of paper and materials
    create interest to apply the patterns.

•   Sand: Add materials to the sand to encourage pattern work such as shells, feathers, stones,
    sticks, rakes, combs. Wet sand will make it easier for children to make patterns of
    sandcastles and shapes.

•   Table top games and tinker tables: Lacing beads, fuzzy felt,
•   pegs and peg boards, mosaic tiles, buttons

•   Festivals: For example Rangoli patterns for Divali

What is pattern?

What is pattern?

Pattern and Maths

‘Pattern permeates the maths curriculum’
(Mathematics in Early Years Education, Smith and Price, 2012)

‘When we discover a pattern we make a
connection and recognise a structure or rule.’
(Messy Maths, A playful outdoor approach for early years, Juliet
Robertson, 2017)

Pattern and Maths
•Subitising
•Dice patterns/dominoes
•Numicon structured apparatus which emphasises
 pattern in number
•Patterns in shape
•Copy a pattern outside that you make up with a
 ball e.g. bounce, roll, throw

Predictors of later achievement
•   Counting out a number from a group
•   Subitising
•   Numeral meanings
•   Relative number sizes
•   Predicting adding one/taking one
•   Number combinations
•   Spontaneously focusing on numerosity
•   Finger gnosis!
•   Pattern awareness
•   Spatial reasoning

Types of pattern
In early years, Papic et al (2011) suggest there are three main
kinds:
• a repeated sequence: the most common examples are AB
   sequences, like a red, blue, red blue pattern with cubes. More
   challenging are ABC or ABB patterns with repeating units like red,
   green, blue or red, blue, blue;
• a growing pattern, such as a staircase with equal steps.
• a symmetrical pattern : shapes with regular features, such as a
   square or triangles with equal sides and angles, and shapes made
   with some equally spaced dots; symmetrical

Children who are highly pattern aware can spot this kind of
regularity: they can reproduce patterns and predict how they will
continue.

Why is pattern awareness
          important?
Spotting underlying patterns is important for identifying many
different kinds of mathematical relationships.

Early algebraic thinking, which involves:
    – noticing mathematical features
    – identifying the relationship between elements
    – observing regularities
• (Blanton et al. cited by Kieran, Pang, Schifter & Ng, 2016).

Developmental stages

Refer to stages using development matters.
Talk through handout???
Insert handout

Underpinning pattern
What do children need to know to understand pattern?

Underpinning pattern
What do children need to know to understand pattern?

To identify the similarities and differences between
objects such as:
• Colour, shape, size, texture, position, quantity
• Size – comparison of size
• Position – children’s own movements
• Quantity – ordering by quantity, blocks stacked by
  2 then 3 then 4

3 main types of pattern

1. Repeating patterns
2. Growing patterns
3. Symmetrical patterns

Repeating pattern

  12121212

Growing pattern

Pre school children also appreciate growing patterns,
 like the ‘staircase’ pattern which underlies traditional
stories and rhymes, such as The enormous turnip, The
     gingerbread man, There was an old woman who
    swallowed a fly, The twelve days of Christmas and
books such as the Hungry Caterpillar and many others.
           What other stories can you think of?

Symmetrical pattern

Progression

Copy a pattern

Continuing a pattern

Create a pattern

Create a pattern

Making your own pattern with similar or different
objects:
• with different objects, but matching colours; or
  vice versa;
• making with very different objects;
• ‘translating’ in different modes, eg using sounds
  or symbols.

Key questions for discussing pattern

                                                         What would
 What do                                                 come next?
                       What is the
you notice?
                         same?
                        What is
                       different?
                                       Can you see
                                                          I wonder
   What is the                          a pattern?
                                                         what would
     rule?                                                 happen
    Can you                                                  if…?
   think of a
     rule?                Can you            What do
                          make this          you like
                          pattern?          about this
                                             pattern?

Patterns in nursery

• Every day opportunities – what can you
  think of?
• Using pattern as a problem solving
  strategy

Patterns in nursery
Every day opportunities:      Using pattern as a problem solving
• Pattern hunt                strategy
• Printing/drawing/painting   • Give problems and ask them to
                                  find the pattern to help them
• Sand                            solve it.
• Block play
• Peg boards
• Beads/laces
• Play doh

Patterns
In stories                                        Through song/dance etc
• Pattern Bugs by Trudy Harris
                                                  • Ten Green Bottles
• The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
• Elmer and Wilbur by David McKee                 • Head, shoulders, knees and
• Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins                      toes
• The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle
• Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature   • The Farmer Wants a wife
  by Sarah C. Campbell
• My First Book of Patterns by Bobby George       • There was an old lady
• Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert                         • Hickory, Dickory, Dock
• Pezzetino by Leo Lionni

Examples of pattern – what is the rule?

                         Add add

    123123123

Examples of pattern – what is the rule?

Online Resources

Gemma Borland
gw16borlandgemma@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk

            Barbara McKay
gw17mckaybarbara@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk
     GIC Leaders of Early Learning