Patterns of Learning

Around the Lower School playground magnolia trees scratch the sky, holly bushes make dots along the buildings, riverbank grape vines wind around fences — all containing intricate patterns of geometry. First Graders in Laura Domalik’s math class investigate the grounds further, noting the detailed tiling of the roof of Centennial Hall, the cracks in the sidewalk and how they branch out in tiny explosions. Walking around, they stop frequently to take pictures with their iPads for deeper investigation. Guided by the pattern alphabet (patternABC), the students make subtle connections — the structure of monkey bars resemble parallel lines, the flight path a bird takes resembles a spiral. They are playing a simple game of matching the details of the natural world to geometrical and core patterns, but, more subtly, they are learning the language of math and extending that language beyond the classroom. 

PatternABC, developed by Alex Wolf, co-founder of na2ure, a design lab focused on creating innovations to accelerate and deepen spatial learning, is a revolutionary approach to education that is easily accessible and usable by young children. Distilling 32 patterns found in nature and design into recognizable icons, this approach to learning focuses on everyday and natural environments, providing building blocks for learning. With an emphasis on play, patternABC connects students’ verbal and mathematical abilities to spatial reasoning. Research shows that leveraging patternABC in early education has been shown to improve school readiness and potentially enhance STEM and art learning outcomes. 

The veins of an Eastern redbud leaf, looked at through the eyes of a student attuned to patterns in nature, become a detailed bloom of various branches, parallel lines and spirals, and seeing these patterns in nature can help a student with math comprehension in the classroom. Students begin seeing that the broccoli they eat has patterns of math within the branching leaves. They see their commute home from school as a winding, spiraling path. “With the pattern alphabet, students can look at those patterns in nature and develop a vocabulary for math patterns,” says Domalik, the Lower School Math Specialist. “The approach helps students make connections across disciplines in the classroom and in nature. Just like you use letters to build words, we can see patterns as a way to build things in nature. Students begin to notice everything and, in their noticing, they develop a common language to talk about these things.” 

In the classroom, Domalik and other resource specialists at Collegiate extend the visual representations of patterns across disciplines. A novel, intricately plotted, can have a winding narrative with multiple character arcs running parallel to each other. Students in art class can explore patterns as they refine their skills of spiral designs and cross hatching. “We began to see the pattern alphabet as a way to connect everything we were doing across science, engineering, art, math and technology,” Domalik says. “This created a common thread for us. This approach is not just a science approach. It’s not just an English approach. It combines everything.” 

Director of Economic Literacy and Entrepreneurship Trina Clemans discovered patternABC’s potential to connect disciplines and study spatial reasoning back in May of 2021, when she happened upon na2ure’s deck of 32 transparent cards of illustrated icons. With an insatiable curiosity, Clemans wanted to learn more, so she reached out to Wolf. 

Wolf explained that research from Dr. Karyn Purvis, the Rees-Jones Director and co-founder of the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, shows that students require roughly 400 repetitions of practice in any subject in order to reach comprehension but that, by playing a game that covers the same subject, students learn to apply the skills much faster. “The whole concept is very play oriented,” Clemans says. “A nature-inspired, play-based approach sparks curiosity, enhances critical thinking and nurtures a love for learning as well as an appreciation of our natural world. It’s so simple, but it’s also really detailed in its simplicity.” 

Her mind humming with possibilities, Clemans went to the late Daniel Bartels, Middle/ Upper STEAM Coordinator and Robotics Program Leader, who always had a knack for finding creative ways to teach students, for a gut check. “I didn’t really know exactly what to think and had some ideas about what might be possible, so I went to Daniel to see what he thought, and he started to get really excited,” Clemans explains. Bartels and Clemans would hustle back and forth between offices to bounce ideas off each other, ultimately forming a partnership with Wolf and Parikh, na2ure co-founder and psychiatrist, to advance the framework that na2ure developed and support their work with the aim of getting patternABC and the accompanying growing body of research into the hands of more students and educators. 

With the added support of David Uttal at Northwestern University’s Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, they landed on the idea of creating a digital app that could incorporate na2ure’s 32 child-friendly icons, mimicking the connections students were making to patterns in nature. Upper School math and computer science teacher Kristine Chiodo developed the prototype of the digital application with input from Upper School computer science students. Lower School students then piloted the application, which displayed a series of images from flowers, to the horns of a moose, sea coral, trees and other natural objects and then gave students the opportunity to select the corresponding patternABC icons they connected to the image. While the students are playing, the back end of the app collects anonymized data connected to thinking time and pattern recognition benchmarks informed by independent research. 

After Chiodo developed an app prototype, the team of Bartels and Clemans from Collegiate, Wolf and Parikh of na2ure, Uttal from Northwestern and Herb Ginsburg of Columbia University entered the product into the 2022-23 Tools Competition, a multi-million dollar competition for education-technology innovation that leverages digital technology, big data and learning science to meet the urgent needs of learners worldwide. 

Among more than 1,000 proposals from 73 countries, the pABC app was among 32 winning submissions, with the team receiving $100,000 to continue developing and refining it based on na2ure’s patternABC. “When pairing patternABC with the app, teachers can nurture learning across STEM and art disciplines and receive insights on the thinking of each individual student,” says Clemans, who, in partnership with Technology Integrator Rachael Rachau, continues working with educators at Collegiate to bring this new pedagogy into more classrooms. “This is really just the beginning of what we can do with patternABC. There’s an added level of sophistication to education when you begin to blend digital and analog learning tools and frameworks in and out of the classroom. The work of na2ure, Collegiate teachers and the pattern alphabet app team will serve as a bridge to so many opportunities.”