So, you’ve got term to term sequences sussed. Time to tackle Nth term!

This idea just sort of appeared in my sequences lesson.

Equipment
Giant playing cards (or numbers on two different colours of A5 card)
Numbered headbands (I made crowns out of corrugated border card)

Set Up
1.Lay out one coloured set of cards on a table or the floor – these are the ones we needed in class. We started with all the cards in the suit.

2. Issue headbands to four pupils.

3. Pupils stand in number order.
4. Give each pupil a different. coloured card from a sequence to hold facing them.

Task
1. Explain that each person represents a term in a sequence, given by the headband.
2. Pupil 1 turns around their card – Red 3.
Question: What is the next number?
Answer: Don’t know
3. Pupil 2 turns around their card – Red 5.
Question: What is the next number?
Answer: Might predict 7
4. Pupil 3 turns around their card – Red 7.
Question: What is the next number? Why?
Answer: 9, add 2.
5. Reveal the last number – Red 9.
6. What is the pattern? Add 2 Which multiplication table has the same pattern? Twos
7. Give each pupil in the sequence the appropriate number from the two times table.
Question: How do you turn the two times table into the sequence?
Answer: Add 1
8. How do you get from the headband to the sequence?
Headband x 2 + 1 = sequence

9. What about a headband with 10 on it? Or 100? Or a mystery number?
10. Try this with other sequences and develop the idea of Nth term.

Outcome
I used this as a plenary for a term to term sequences lesson with a shared class. In the following lesson my colleague, D, used this idea to develop the concept of Nth term with another class. He wanted to make something for the pupils to have in their book to remember this. This is what he came up with: Handout for sequences intro (pptx) or How to for sequences(docx). I’m currently trying out hosting my own resources, rather than using TES resources – so we’ll see how effective this is.