My reason for being.

Maths reasoning seems to be about being able to explain why. It's within the National Curriculum that children can 'reason mathematically'. It's about making links and patterns and working out if a rule 'always' happens.

This can be encouraged with maths talk and using particular sentence starters. Maybe they have to say it back to you to start with - maths mastery is big into that.

Something which is key is that when you give children problems to work out, they understand all of the words. E.g. 'sum of'

or 'consecutive' or 'multiple'. Otherwise they will get very lost!

One great idea was to have a number of the day or the week on the board and throughout the day/week, children can write up what the question was. e.g. If I wrote up 10, children might write up 2x5 or 1x10 or 9+1.

Another little snippet I found out today is that the sum of a prime number can never be a multiple of 3 - never knew that!!!

Reading Askew, M (2011) Transforming Primary Mathematics, is interesting when thinking about reasoning and maths talk. They suggest regularly asking children to speak to their talk partner, share your answers and explain how you got that answer. Askew says that this gives children the opportunity to practise explaining their reasoning.

It seems that it is also important to consider what you're asking the children to maths talk about. Askew suggests a statement such as:

All squares are rectangles - is always, sometimes or never true

Is more 'mindful' than a question and invites more discussion.

Asking more higher attaining children in maths to 'convince me' will help them explain the processes that they did more instinctively than some other children.

Reasoning helps when thinking about concepts, rather than specific sums. It's getting the a real root of mathematical understanding.

Ways to encourage maths talk:

1. paired calculations - give 2 similar calculations to do. Each child works out one of the sums and then shares and explains to their partner. By having different sums, the listener will be more interested.

2. Solver & recorder - 1 piece of paper & pen. 1 child solves and the other records.

3. Clue problem - in pairs each child gets a clue and then they jointly solve the problem.

As a whole class technique:

1. Rehearse - the children rehearse the explanations during their activity or talk partner tasks.

2. Revoice - choosing 1/2 children to 'be the teacher' and explain what they found out.

3. Repeat - Get another child to repeat the explanation back. The original child can decide if the retelling was accurate.

4. Rephrase - children are invited to explain it in their own words. Again the original child can decide whether the rephrased version is accurate.

5. Build on - 'Does anyone want to add anything to this method' 'Did anyone do anything similar?'

6. Comment on

Brilliant 'maths snacks' videos on ATM!!!!