Elaboration on this Achievement Objective
This means students will explore sequential patterns, either spatial, for example, , ... or numeric, for example, 1, 3, 5, 7 ... A pattern has consistency so further terms of it can be anticipated from those already known. In spatial patterns students should be able to identify the repeating element, for example, in the pattern above, and use this to predict the shape in a given ordinal position, for example, the next shape is , the eleventh shape will be . For simple number patterns students should identify the consistent “gap” between the terms (for example, 1, 3, 5, 7... two is added each time), and use this additive difference to find further terms. Students should also develop their concept of relations between variables using spatial patterns that can be represented using numeric tables of values, for example, for this pattern, how many squares make 7 crosses?