Unit 5: Seeing Structure and Generalizing (MP7 and MP8)

5.4 Performance Tasks and Student Work

Let’s take a look at some tasks that require students to determine patterns in growing figures and generalize from how they count objects to form a general rule for a pattern.

For each grade span below, you will see a MARS performance task and corresponding student work. You may wish to download and print a copy of each task through the links provided. Although the tasks at each grade level are different, each focuses upon patterning problems in which one has to determine a relationship for the nth term of a sequence.

Complete the task for your grade level span and then examine the corresponding student work.

K–2 Example:

Building Walls, Grade 2 Task (pdf)

Student Work for Building Walls (pdf)

Refer to the Building Walls task as you respond to the questions below:

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3–5 Example:

Hexagons in a Row, Grade 5 Task (pdf)

Student Work for Hexagons in a Row (pdf)

Refer to the Hexagons in a Row task as you respond to the questions below:

6–8 Example:

Necklaces, Grade 7 Task (pdf)

Student Work for Necklaces (pdf)

Refer to the Necklaces task as you respond to the questions below:

9–12 Example:

Sidewalk Patterns, Grade 9 Integrated (pdf)

Student Work for Sidewalk Patterns (pdf)

Refer to the Sidewalk Patterns task as you respond to the questions below: :