Students read Anno's Magic Seeds by Mitsumasa Anno. In it, a wizard gives Jack two seeds and tells him that if he eats one, he won't be hungry for a year and if he plants the other one, two new seeds will be formed. Jack continues in this way for awhile and then tries other schemes that produce even more new seeds. The students work in groups to make charts and tables to show how many seeds Jack has at given points in time. As an individual assessment assignment, students are asked to find how many seeds Jack has after ten years using one of the discovered patterns and to support their answers in writing and with tables.
Students supply the missing numbers on a picture of a ruler which has some blanks.
Then they explore how to find the missing numbers between any two given numbers on a number line. Students investigate number patterns using their calculators. For example, they might begin at 30, repeatedly add 6, and record the first 10 answers, making a prediction about what the calculator will show before they hit the equals key. Or they might begin at 90 and repeatedly subtract 9. 2. Use tables, rules, variables, open sentences, and graphs to describe patterns and other relationships.