(B8) WHAT IS REASONING? WHY IS REASONING AND PROBLEM SOLVING IMPORTANT TO TEACH IN MODERN PRIMARY SCHOOLS?

BLOG 8

WHAT IS REASONING? WHY IS REASONING AND PROBLEM SOLVING IMPORTANT TO TEACH IN MODERN PRIMARY SCHOOLS?

The National Literacy and Numeracy Framework (LNF) has been introduced to help children develop excellent literacy and numeracy skills during their time at school. (The Welsh Government) 

All schools across Wales practise the use of reasoning, not to be confused with problem solving. These are two separate things, although they go hand-in-hand. For example, a child would solve a problem to come to an answer, and then reason if that is the most suitable answer, and whether they have used the most logical and practical way to come to that answer. It is also important to emphasise to these children that by showing all of their workings out, they are demonstrating their full knowledge of that question to their practitioner. ‘A key skill in becoming fully numerate (and to becoming an independent adult) is the ability to make your own decisions and learn from them. This key skill is central to these activities: they have been designed to encourage learners to develop the ability and confidence to choose their own methods and ways of recording and presenting their work’ (The Welsh Government)

Problem Solving 

Many children would find problem solving difficult, this could be because they may think that there is only one solution, however, by practising and doing these questions on a regular basis, they should begin to understand the skill of modifying a behaviour to achieve the best solution. It is very common for children to read the data or question incorrectly, which often results in wrong answers. The Welsh Government have issued reasoning support materials that are available for free, for teachers, parents and students to use at free will. They are categorised by school year, and are relatively suitable for that age (obviously this doesn’t always apply to every child). Problem solving and reasoning helps develop a growth mind set, and gives a meaning to mathematics by applying the question to situations that the children can relate to. For example, the picture below shows a year six reasoning question, which asks various questions about the number of seats and the price of tickets on an aeroplane. 

Many students and teachers use the ‘rucsac’ acronym as a useful way to remember how to answer a problem solving question. 

R: Read

U: Understand

C: Choose

S: Solve

A: Answer

C: Check

The students follow the six rules to ensure top marks, especially in a question where they could earn a lot of marks. Read and know which information is important in the question, Understand what you need to find out in order to answer, Choose the correct method of calculation and operation, Solve the problem by following the steps, Answer the question by showing all of your workings out, Check your answer for no silly mistakes. 

“when we verbalize mathematical thoughts, we need to reconstruct them in our minds, and when others react to them, we reconstruct them again. This act of reconstruction deepens understanding. When we work on mathematics in solitude there is only one opportunity to understand the mathematics.” Boaler (2009, p.44)  This speaks of the mathematical side of problem solving, where a lot of the questions are based on data and numbers that students must evaluate the questions and construct their answer based on this. However, many problem solving and reasoning questions offer no data at all, so that the student must use their reasoning skills to identify the key information given, and conclude a structured answer using their literacy skills. This can often be mis-leading, as the question may look like a ‘trick question’, or confuse the student by providing irrelevant information. A crucial element in achieving this aim is to facilitate the development of numerical reasoning: the ability of the learner to apply their numeracy to a multitude of contexts in order to solve problems (The Welsh Government). “Problem solving is potentially one of the broadest topics in psychology. So much of what humans do in their work and personal lives could be characterized as problem solving that the boundaries of what is and what is not within the topic area are unclear.”( Mumford, 2011)

Below I have provided a link to  YouTube video which explains the new Welsh Curriculum in full:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0fsT0gH7U

Reference list

1.   Boaler, J. (2009) The Elephant in the Classroom. London: Souvenir Press Ltd.

2.   Handbook of Organizational Creativity, edited by Michael D. Mumford, Elsevier Science & Technology, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cardiffmet/detail.action?docID=765294.

3.    The Welsh Government, 2015. 

4.    The Welsh Government, 2018. ‘A new curriculum for Wales’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0fsT0gH7U