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Develop Patterning Skills as a Foundation for STEM and Reading

Tags

Mathematics ELA: Reading Elementary School Strategy

Skills

Abstract Reasoning Spatial Perception

Develop Patterning Skills as a Foundation for STEM and Reading

If your student has weaker abstract reasoning

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will improve long-term reading and mathematics skills when they are explicitly taught patterning skills in elementary school.
  2. Teacher Takeaways: a) Patterning skills enable students to draw generalizations and see beyond the information directly in front of them. Developing a mindset to step back and try to understand what elements are similar and what are different translates into longer-term math, reading and problem solving capabilities. b) Younger students might begin with simple repeating shape patterns. They can progress into numerical patterns that increase or decrease by a constant difference. Since words also form patterns, students benefit from experimenting with letter patterns as well. c) See next slide for parent suggestions to incorporate patterning into everyday experiences at home.

Parental Support

  1. Discuss how the house numbers on your street make a pattern, growing by 1 or 2, etc.; evens on one side, odds on the other. Discuss the pattern. Have fun guessing what the next house number will be.
  2. When listening to music, create rhythmic patterns with your child by clapping and stomping. Have your child decide what comes next. Write down the pattern as a series of letters, e.g. a CCSS (clap, clap, stomp, stomp).
  3. Identify patterns while you read, such as repeating phrases or rhyming words. Have your child guess what will come next before you turn the page based on the pattern. Dr. Seuss books are just one of many options.
  4. Jump Numbers is a fun app to exercise patterning with numbers.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Understanding patterns enables students to organize, code, and categorize information across subjects and is an essential life skill. Recognizing and remembering the patterns found in letters, words, and sentence structures is important for reading and writing. In math, understanding patterns helps students understand the logic and order behind challenging concepts. Strong patterning skills help students in science draw upon prior knowledge to make logical predictions or hypotheses. Building patterning skills early can help students develop strong abstraction and flexible thinking skills.

Best-suited for students with weaker: Attention, Inhibition, Long-term Memory, Short-Term Memory, Spatial Skills, Working Memory (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)