This displays the Getting started on page 189 of the Student Resource Book.

• Students ability to identify and describe patterns can be quite varied. This is a good opportunity to ensure that students are familiar with repeating patterns and to develop shared vocabulary for example “core of a pattern”.
• ‘Growing patterns’ may be a type of pattern that students are unfamiliar with. Explicitly identifying this as a different type of pattern and asking students to identify how it differs from a ‘repeating’ pattern is very helpful for some students

This displays three different types of pattern above number strips. Students are asked to identify “the core pattern” in each and to continue the pattern.

• Whereas the first pattern is a simple repeating pattern with five items, the second pattern is a little more challenging because it doubles one item. The third pattern is like the first, but students often find it difficult to identify a pattern with one or more parts ‘missing’. Reading the pattern aloud will help some students, as will hearing other students explain their strategies for identifying the missing piece or extending the pattern. Encourage discussion about the efficiency of these strategies.
• Wherever possible encourage students to recognise and use the “unit of repeat” or core pattern with additive (or in some cases multiplicative) strategies to determine what the 10^th and 20^th objects will be, rather than physically extending the pattern. Providing a longer number strip or hundreds board and different coloured counters often helps students make this connection.

This displays a sheet that asks students to identify and continue patterns that grow from a hexagonal shape.

• Students who are having difficulty should be encouraged to draw the pattern from the beginning, as this often helps them to discover which elements are being added.
• Students need to be introduced to a variety of patterns that grow in different dimensions and have opportunity to use these as the inspiration for patterns of their own.
• Building a shared vocabulary and introducing synonyms, for example more specific prepositions such as beside, between, before, after, ‘next to’, through group and class discussion is particularly important for students who have a limited vocabulary or who did not learn English as their first language.

The first page displays a number sequence with decreasing distances marked. Students are asked to discover the rule and complete each sequence. The second has two number sequences which can be compared.

• Teachers could use the first of these sheets to discuss how the inverse property of addition and subtraction can be used to check a sequence or rule. Students may identify this strategy themselves, but if not it would be helpful to make the through explicit instruction.
• Teachers could ask students what they notice about the rate at which the numbers change. Awareness that numbers increase more slowly when added rather than multiplied, and that numbers decrease more slowly when subtracted rather than divided, provides students with a starting point for identifying the operation within a rule.

This displays a set of four chains and asks students to identify and complete a sequence within each chain and chains.

• Students will need to discover that the sequence vertically within each chain is the same and that there is another pattern extending across the chains.
• Teachers could extend discussion by asking questions such as, whether the numbers 44 or 68 could occur later in this pattern? Or, what numbers might appear on a fifth chain. It is very important to give students an opportunity to explain the reasons for their answer.