The Marching Ants

This is the Marching Ants problem.  It was a classroom challenge.  First we used five counters on each side.  Then the teacher told us to look for the pattern.  We could not find the pattern.  After that, Mrs Hickford told us to only use 1 counter on each side.  Then she told us to add more counters on each side.  But when we got up to 4 and 5 counters we couldn't solve the problem because we did not find the pattern.  Then we started to look for the pattern as well and then we could do it.  Can you solve the problem?