Grade Three

Students will explore, recognize, represent, and apply patterns and relationships, both informally and formally.

Gaining on their knowledge from grades one and two, students will continue to learn about patterns in the third grade through recognizing the pattern implicit in our place value system; recognizing and creating geometric patterns; using and recognizing patterns in a multiplication table; recording a repeated addition pattern using a multiplicative notation; and recognizing the meaning of open sentences in multiplication.

Providing students with ones, tenths, and hundredths blocks is necessary during grade three to show the pattern of how 1 tenth equals ten, 10 tenths equals 100, etc. Have students create different letters or shapes to continue patterns such as "L" shapes, triangular shapes, or square shapes where each time the student adds more blocks to continue the pattern.

Remember to incorporate the "flips" of shapes in your patterns!

Provide your class with a multiplication chart so they can find patterns in the numbers horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, and that some rows are "doubles" of other rows. For example, Row 4 (0, 4, 8, 12, 16...) is double Row 2 (0, 2, 4, 6, 8...).

When providing students with repeated addition problems, students should be able to recognize that the addition problem can be represented with multiplication.
For example: 3+3+3+3+3 = 15 can also be written as 5x3 = 15.

Providing students with multiplication operations with a missing number value is also a useful way to get students to recognize patterns.