Listen carefully for references to the use of patterns in the students' procedures for copying. One student can secretly remove part of the staircase they have made and ask the other student to make the piece that is missing. The piece constructed can be checked by comparing it to the first student's piece or by fitting it into the copy of the staircase. Again, the teacher should have students explain the reasoning used in deciding how to construct the missing piece. One partner makes a pattern by placing geoblocks on the long strip of paper.
Students remove the geoblocks from the strip, trade places, and repeat the activity several times.
Listen carefully for students' use of physical attributes of the blocks to describe the patterns. Challenge students to read their partner's pattern in more than one way. Challenge students to try to make a pattern that could be described in more than one way. One partner begins a pattern by placing shells on the workmat. The other partner continues the pattern.