The students had a lot of fun creating repeating and growing patterns and explaining their thought process using the voice recorder and pen tool in the Educreations app. Prior to the lesson, the classroom teacher made baskets for each team with a variety of manipulatives that they could use to make a pattern. She also created an Educreations account and signed into her account on the iPads so that her students could easily save and share their work.
After the students created a pattern at their desk, their teacher and I went around with the iPads and showed them how to record and draw in Educreations. After showing one student, I then asked that student to take the iPad and walk their neighbor through the steps of recording in this app. This way it was like having 2 additional instructors in the room and it was helping the students who were training their classmates to retain that information. As we got going, other students had an opportunity to teach their classmates and really seemed to love that responsibility.
In addition, their understanding of patterns grew because as they were recording, they would be writing on their pattern and notice a place where what they were saying and what the pattern showed were not matching up. They would stop the recording, update their pattern and then re-record. Some students created repeated patterns and others opted for growing patterns. They did an awesome job. Here are some of their recordings:
