Abstract
This paper describes kindergarten children’s engagement with two patterning activities. The first activity includes two tasks in which children are asked to choose possible ways for extending two different repeating patterns and the second activity calls for comparing different pairs of repeating patterns. Children’s recognition of the unit of repeat and their recognition of the structure of the repeating patterns are investigated. Findings suggest differences between children’s responses to patterns that end with a complete unit of repeat and those that end with a partial unit. In addition, the issue of presenting repeating patterns using different media is discussed.
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Notes
In our study, kindergarten refers to children between the ages of 5–6 years old scheduled to enter first grade in the following school year. However, when referring to other studies, we adopt the terminology (e.g., preschool or kindergarten) that is used in the original study.
All patterns appear in color on the online version of this paper.
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This research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1270/14).
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Tsamir, P., Tirosh, D., Levenson, E.S. et al. Repeating patterns in kindergarten: findings from children’s enactments of two activities. Educ Stud Math 96, 83–99 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-017-9762-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-017-9762-7