Using Patterns to Solve Problems

Hi Grade 5s!

Can you believe we're halfway through the week already?

Today we talked about how to use patterns to help us solve word problems. I gave you the problem about Sam and his baby-sitting gig as an example.

We learned that Sam earns $6 for every hour he baby-sits. We needed to find out how much money he'd earn after working for 2 hours, 3 hours, and 4 hours.

We began to solve the problem by making a 2-column table like this:

Time Worked Money Earned
(hours) ($)
---------------------------------------

Then we filled in the chart with what we knew. We knew that if Sam worked for 1 hour, he would earn $6. If he worked for 2 hours, he would earn $12. Here's how we filled in the chart:

Time Worked Money Earned
(hours) ($)
---------------------------------------

1 6
2 12
3 18

We noticed that we could figure out how much money Sam would earn by multiplying the hours he worked by $6. If we wanted to find out how much he would earn after working for 4 hours, we would solve 4 x 6. Sam would earn $24.

We can write the pattern rule for how much money Sam earns two ways:

Start at 6. Add 6 each time.

OR

The number of hours multiplied by 6.

As always, if you've got questions, I've got answers! Post them here.

-Ms. Lewis.