Image of the Week: Exploring Domino Patterns

Exploring Domino Patterns

We love dominoes! (And many of you do, too, judging by some seriously fun conversations on Twitter!) There is so much you can do with dominoes around number, pattern, and structure. Try it yourself. Have a look at our Image of the Week: What patterns do you see?

You might notice that this domino pattern is set up in a more complex way than some of the others we’ve shared where dominoes are arranged side-by-side in a row. This different arrangement opens up different kinds of patterns and observations. You might have focused on the four values in the center, or the four at the edges, or the relationships within or across dominoes. Here are just a few of the patterns you might have seen inside this arrangement of dominoes:

Simply inviting children to look for patterns in this domino image – or one of the other domino pattern images on our website – can open up dozens of diverse observations. Every student can enter a task like this, and the longer you dwell on these patterns, the more students will notice. Why does this matter? Pattern-seeking and looking for structure are at the heart of what it means to do mathematics. Too often when we engage students in thinking about patterns, the patterns we show are simplistic or we have a specific pattern we want students to notice. Opening up pattern-seeking allows students to see that, in patterned spaces, there are likely to be many layered patterns and many ways to describe those patterns.

These images invite several follow-up questions:

• How could we describe the pattern you noticed?
• How could we represent the patterns you noticed?
• Why does this pattern exist?
• Where could you add onto this pattern? What would you add on? Why?

Whether you have very young students, whose observations focus on the counting sequence and sums of the individual dominoes, or much older students ready to tackle describing and extending their patterns, exploring domino patterns will give you and your students lots to talk about.

And we invite you to follow us on Twitter! Tweet us the fascinating ideas you students have about our activities or how you’re trying these activities in your space. We can’t wait to hear from you!

To multiplicity, cheers!

Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group