Activity Overview
Students use physical or virtual manipulatives to construct a pattern using match sticks. The number of matches used to construct the pattern is tabulated and graphed against the number of shapes created in the pattern.
Objectives
Plot linear relationships on the Cartesian plane with and without the use of digital technologies (National Curriculum: ACMNA193)
Vocabulary
Linear, data collection, algebra, modeling
About the Lesson
Students are required to construct a pattern consisting of triangles using matchsticks. (A virtual manipulative is provided in the downloads) Students tabulate the number of matches required to construct the pattern for the corresponding number of triangles generated. This information is then graphed and used to make predictions for the number of triangles from a given number of matches and the number of matches from a given number of triangles.