Image of the Week: The Patterns We Ignore

The Patterns We Ignore

Every day it is critical to ensure that every child has a way to meaningfully participate in mathematics, so they can see themselves as creative, capable mathematicians. This sense of competence can buoy children when they encounter the confusion, challenge, disequilibrium, and struggle that is part of doing and learning mathematics. Today, we look at pattern-seeking as one entry point where all children can find ways to contribute.

We chose this week’s image because it is full of patterns that students might find, but also because of where it comes from. No matter where you live humans leave patterned marks on the landscape, and these are most visible in cities. Urban spaces are full of patterns that we often overlook, often because they are right beneath our feet. By closely examining them, like in this image of a sewer cover in a city street, we bring children’s daily lived experiences of the world into the math classroom. And perhaps we can change the way they look at their worlds as they walk home.

I have fallen in love with sewer covers, gratings, lampposts, street signs, and even garbage cans as examples of urban patterns. Look at the image of the week: What patterns do you see? Look up close. Notice the ways that different shapes repeat, and the symmetries created by the radial design. And, of course, how you see these patterns matters too. Students might decompose the patterns in many ways. Take the following images, for example. Each one shows a different way of seeing the same pattern by decomposing it differently:

Annotate your image to show the many ways that students see patterns in this everyday object and invite all voices into the conversation. Then, consider taking a pattern walk with your students around your school or community, hunting for patterns in the ordinary and ignored places where they are often abundant.

​To multiplicity, cheers!

Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group