This article describes Frieze patterns as "patterns or border patterns....commonly found in wallpaper borders, designs on pottery, decorative designs on buildings, needlepoint stitches, ironwork railings and in many other places" and that they're used "in the textiles and clothing of the indigenous peoples of North America."
Upon viewing some of the examples Judy McDonald and Harley Weston included in their article, my eyes drifted to this colourful Frieze pattern:
(Image from McDonald and Weston "Frieze Designs in Indigenous Art")
The pattern is gorgeous and at first I thought to keep it in the back of my mind for our patterning unit. However, when studying the pattern I found that it would be useful for our multiplication unit too. In this unit, we ask students to write word problems from a given picture. Since the concept of multiplication is "equal groups" I figured this pattern would work out well.
So I presented this pattern and background information on what a Frieze pattern was to my students. Next, the students talked about what was repeating and we made a list of the patterns they found. Then we discussed various ways we could write multiplication problems from it. They were quite creative and came up with the following:
Question #1
There are 4 circles. They are 4 pie shaped pieces in each circle. How many pie shaped pieces are there altogether?
Question #2
There are 4 circles. There are 2 yellow pie shaped pieces in each circle. How many yellow pie shaped pieces are there altogether?
Question #3
There are 5 groups of triangles. There are 2 triangles in each group. How many triangles are there altogether?
They also solved the problems they wrote. What I found interesting was they started extending multiplication word problem writing to other patterns they found - in books, their own clothing, in the school, at home. It was great to see them take this skill and apply it in other real world settings.
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