This sequence is named after the Italian mathematician who lived during the 12th century. It occurs in nature, modelling the population growth in rabbits and also the development of the spiral in a snail’s shell.
The terms in the sequence can be made by adding the previous two terms:
There is a worksheet below, which can be printed and photocopied for children to use. It involves the children trying to work out how the sequence is made and then getting them to work out the first 25 numbers in the sequence. These are listed below…
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 21 | 34 | 55 | 89 | 144 | 233 |
| 377 | 610 | 987 | 1597 | 2584 | 4181 | 6765 | 10946 | 17711 | 28657 | 46368 | 75025 |
The children may want to use a calculator to carry out the latter part of the exercise, but whether they use one or not, they should understand the importance of being accurate (and checking their calculations for errors). This is because one simple mistake will make the rest of the sequence incorrect (which can be very frustrating if you have spent a long time working out sums!).
