Numerical Patterns

10 min

Narrative

The purpose of this Choral Count is to invite students to practice counting by 10 and notice patterns in the count. These understandings help students develop fluency and will be helpful later in this lesson when students need to be able to, given a rule, generate numerical patterns and explain features of the patterns that are not explicit in the rule. Keep the record of this count displayed for students to reference in the lesson activities.

Launch

  • “Count by 10, starting at 10.”
  • Record as students count.
  • Stop counting and recording at 150.
Teacher Instructions
  • “What patterns do you see?”
  • 1–2 minutes: quiet think time
  • Record responses.

Sample Response

Record the count in a single column.

Sample responses:

  • All the numbers are even.
  • The digits in the tens place go up by 1. It’s like a count of the number of tens.
  • They are all multiples of 10. It’s like 0×100 \times10, 1×01\times0, 2×10,2\times10, etc.
Activity Synthesis (Teacher Notes)
  • “How is describing what you notice about the numbers in our count the same as what you have been doing with shape patterns? How is it different?” (Same: Even though we were counting by 10, we noticed lots of other things that are also true. “Count by 10” is like a rule for creating a pattern. Different: It’s only numbers, there aren’t any shapes or diagrams. I’m not sure if there’s a rule.)
  • “Today we are going to generate and describe numerical patterns that follow a rule. Numerical patterns are like what we do in the Choral Count. To create one, you need to know what to start with and what to do to get the next number.”
  • “In a Choral Count, we count on by a given number. Numerical patterns can have rules like start with 0 and keep adding 2 or start with 1 and keep multiplying by 3.”
Standards
Addressing
  • 4.OA.5·Generate a number or shape pattern that follows a given rule. Identify apparent features of the pattern that were not explicit in the rule itself. <em>For example, given the rule "Add 3" and the starting number 1, generate terms in the resulting sequence and observe that the terms appear to alternate between odd and even numbers. Explain informally why the numbers will continue to alternate in this way.</em>
  • 4.OA.C.5·Generate a number or shape pattern that follows a given rule. Identify apparent features of the pattern that were not explicit in the rule itself. <span>For example, given the rule “Add 3” and the starting number 1, generate terms in the resulting sequence and observe that the terms appear to alternate between odd and even numbers. Explain informally why the numbers will continue to alternate in this way.</span>

20 min

15 min