Teaching with Patterns

Part of what I love so much about math is the patterns. There are patterns in just about everything, and it simply amazes me at how much you can trust the patterns. Because I naturally love this characteristic of math, it's super easy for me to interest kids in discovering them. I'm always on the lookout for a new pattern I've never seen before, or a new way to use a pattern to help students master concepts or just simply become interested in topics.

After 3 years of private tutoring, I've encountered at least 5 high school students and more than 10 elementary students who needed help mastering basic facts. They could not accomplish the tasks at hand because they didn't know simple addition or multiplication, divisibility rules or counting patterns. So I've gathered some of my favorite patterns and teaching ideas to share with you. I can't take credit for any of these, because, well, quite frankly, I didn't invent math ;) Here they are:

Everyone knows the finger trick for counting by nines, but even that confused some of my students, until I showed them how to count like this...

But what about after the 10th number Miss Stefany?
        I just show them this...

There's a similar pattern for counting 8s as well...

And then this little bit...

I also found this helpful trick for counting 7s, I was always taught you just had to memorize these, but that isn't true!

count across 1,2,3 / 2,3,4 / 4,5,6

Start on left side and count 1 through 9

Just recently I found this circle counting trick, the most difficult part of this is drawing a circle :/ if you can get that part, just make sure the 0 is at the top and the 5 is at the very bottom, you can show patterns for EVERY number on this! Here are a few I've used with at least some success....

I also take the time to show my students what is NOT in the pattern. This helps them a lot later when we're working on multiplication facts. If one says that 4 time a number is 43, he immediately knows it's not right because NONE of the multiples of 4 ever end with a 3!

Would you like to take a peek at a few resources I've created that will help you explore these patterns and more? In recognition of Math Madness Wednesdays, I've decided to put ALL of my skip counting resources on sale from this Wednesday (June 25th) until Friday (June 27th)! If you grab a great deal, stop back here and let me know what it was. I'll pick one commenter on this post to win ALL of my skip counting resources! Winner will be chosen randomly on Sunday (June 29th), no later than 10pm EASTERN.

Thank you for stopping by! Click the image below to find more posts and resources all about this week's Math Madness topic: Patterns!