Planning for Reasoning

I’ve known for a while that we need to improve our reasoning and problem solving teaching at my school. Analysis of the SATs papers showed that whilst number skills were really high, skills in ‘using and applying’ (as reasoning and problem solving were called) were less developed. Referring back to the post on why it was good that levels were dropped, it could be said that some children were moving on from primary with level 4 in maths overall, level 4 in number, but only level 3 in using and applying. This use of levels to mask a specific weakness in what a child can do is another reasdon they are bad.

The not-brilliant Ofsted in June, only shed a brighter light on what I already knew – we needed to change our teaching so that children learned to reason more.

This is a hard thing to do, particularly for older children when this expectation hasn’t been there all the way through school. There is a legacy of doing maths in a certain way, which leaves gaps in knowledge and resistance when a new way comes along.

However, 2 key documents from the NCETM have really helped us out. Firstly the Planning for reasoning documents, which have ideas for how to get children reasoning for every objective in the national curriculum. Secondly the Maths Hubs materials for mastery (and mastery with a greater depth) have the expectation that children are reasoning writ large through them.

These documents have been brilliant in supporting me and the teachers to have a greater expectations of what children can do. It would be even better if someone could produce some text books with these expectations equally prevalent…

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