First grade shapes up

First grade update: our pattern explorations are going well. So well that kids were lining up to puzzle out patterns in class. The goal was to pick the correct colorful tile from the shape pile and to continue the unfolding pattern stretching down the workspace, or, “pattern laboratory bench.”

Confidence

Excitement

?

The class had to line up outside the classroom while I set up a new puzzle on the lab bench. Then, Ford factory-style, each student walked by the bench placing a shape as they went. Students already through the daunting gauntlet would queue on the other side of the bench for support if anyone later in line got stuck. They were very good about not giving the answer out freely. Sometimes they would “cheer” on their stumped classmate by saying, for example, “Go Green house!” even though the student was clearly in blue house. Very sneaky.

"I don't know why, but I've been feeling so blue today..."

Oh no! I see a mistake...

Helpers to the rescue. Crisis averted.

Fun was had, and patterns are beginning to be grasped. From my extra-novice diagnosis of these students, every class could benefit from pattern work because patterns underlie discovery and learning. I’ve found those two concepts, discovery and learning, to be somewhat distant from the rote exercises I’ve seen the students chugging away at, so it is my hope that these little plastic colored shapes will set these first graders on wild paths of discovery and inquisitiveness. Or at least give them a break from sitting on a bench being talked at. I’d take either if I were them.