Choral Counting

          A group of 6 of our cohort members did a choral count for a group of 3^rd graders. We decided to count by 6’s because we knew that they had been counting by 3’s so we figured that this would be a challenge for them. We planned the count so that we would write 5 numbers down in one column and then move onto the next column and write 5 numbers down. So it looked like this:

6	36
12	42
18	48
24	54
30	60

          

          There were lots of strategies and patterns that were noticed by our group of students to determine what number came next in the count by 6’s. The students were using counting up by 6’s, finding the pattern based on the 1’s and 10’s place, adding a number then subtracting a different number, and they used an even/odd pattern to find the next number.

          One student noticed that there was a repeating pattern in the 1’s place of subtracting four then adding six. This pattern worked to find the number in the 1’s place. They also noticed that in the 1’s place that the numbers repeat so it goes 6,2,8,4,0 then 6,2,8,4,0. Another pattern that was discovered is if you add 30 to the 10’s place then you get the number in the second column.

          The even/odd pattern was the most intriguing pattern because I would have never found this pattern. A boy stated that the digit in the tens place had a pattern that went even, odd, odd, even, odd. He then predicted that the second column would have the same pattern. When the 6th number was said his face lit up and he wanted to say that his prediction was wrong because he wanted to change his idea. When we finished counting to the 10th number, he told us that the second column had a pattern of odd, even, even, odd, even. Then we asked the boy what he thought the next column would be because we wanted the boy to be thinking if the pattern really worked for this set of numbers. It turned out that the odd columns have the same pattern and the even columns have the same pattern.

Picture of the Count we did with the students and their strategies are highlighted.