About This Lesson
Use 'Patterns in Pascal's triangle' as a starter - give each individual/pair one of the diagrams and ask them to describe the pattern of shading and to say what links the shaded cells. Then expand (1-x)^-2 as a class and simplify first six terms. students then independently investigate the expansion for three different values of x.
Interesting activity - worksheet a nice intro to binomial series, and Pascal triangle activity could generate good discussion.