After many attempts, Teacher Julia and Teacher Isaac finally had the children interested in patterns! At the beginning of the year, the children just wouldn’t stay engaged at the math center with either the colored beads and pattern cards or the geometric pattern activities. They’d come and play, but quickly turned to other activities in the classroom. Julia and Isaac had tried engaging them in the activities through math talk around the patterns as usual, but nothing seemed to entice the children to stay.

But, during a conversation during nap time recently (about the only time they had to work on curriculum!) Isaac had noted that, because of new construction that began in the area, the children had become really interested in vehicles, especially big trucks and excavators.  They had been asking to read the construction and vehicle books and had been playing with the extensive set of toy construction vehicles. Isaac thought this interest might be used to reengage children in patterns. Julia nodded and said, “We could use cardstock to make pattern cards of pictures of vehicles and move some of the toy vehicles to the center. I think that would draw them in.”  And, indeed, the children were very excited about copying the new pattern cards. Boys and girls eagerly lined up the toy vehicles in the same order as the pattern cards.

What a breakthrough! The children would add their own noises, Vroom, Vroom and Beep, Beep, Beep, as they moved the toy vehicles into place copying the pattern cards, Julia spent some time at the math center marveling at how the children seemed to be able to copy quite sophisticated patterns: Bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck in an ABABBABABB pattern. And, when she asked them what the pattern was, sure enough, they said Bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck dump truck pointing to each of the vehicles in turn.

But, as she listened, she didn’t detect the pause between the units that often comes with detection of the underlying unit (i.e., ABABB-...pause…ABABB). The children were just calling out the names of the vehicles in order with no special emphasis on the first vehicle in the unit or pause between units.

To check and see if the children understood the pattern unit that they were copying (after all, they don’t always pause or emphasize the beginning object in the unit), she took away the pattern card and asked Joselyn, who already had two pattern units established in her toy vehicle line, to figure out what went next in the line of Bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck. Joselyn said Sure! And proceeded to add two bulldozers and looked up and smiled. Julia smiled back and asked Joselyn to describe the pattern. Joselyn replied, Bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, bulldozer, dump truck, dump truck, bull dozer, bull dozer. Hmmm, Julia thought to herself, I think we need to revisit what we think we are teaching here!

As she and Isaac took advantage of the peace and quiet during naptime again, they talked about the difference between copying an existing pattern and detecting what made the pattern a pattern – the pattern unit. Somehow in reengaging the children, they had neglected to keep up the math talk. Children were sure interested in the pattern activities, but that wasn’t translating into more conceptual understanding of patterns. Back to the drawing board – and math talk. They spent the rest of naptime coming up with questions to help children detect those underlying patterns, What do you notice about the pattern? Why do you think that vehicle goes next? Can you describe the pattern card? What do you think repeats on the pattern card?