Try these activities all about making patterns and predictions by Stephanie Sheffield and Rusty Bresser R ecognizing patterns and using them to make predictions is, believe it or not, part of algebraic thinking. During a math lesson, I show the tube to my students, and tell them that there are colored cubes hidden inside. After students have made their guesses, I slowly slide the first cube out of the tube, revealing the first red cube. Carefully, I keep the rest of the train hidden inside the newsprint tube. I continue asking for predictions and then keep showing each next cube until the class recognizes and describes the repeating pattern.
Most classes recognize it after ten cubes.
I ask the class to predict what color the 20th cube will be. Several children raise their hands with ideas, but I ask them to put their answers on paper. When everyone is done, I call children together to discuss their work, asking students to take turns explaining how they solved the problem. Finally, I pull out the rest of the train from the tube to reveal that the 20th cube is white. I ask them to use crayons to show the red, blue, white, white repeating pattern on their charts, starting from 1 and continuing all the way to 100.