Planning and assessing mathematical reasoning in the primary classroom

Despite a growing emphasis in Australia on mathematical reasoning in curriculum documents and resources to support its understanding and teaching, reasoning still remains difficult to plan and assess for many teachers. In this paper, we share the planning of a number task intended to elicit reasoning in primary students, and the assessment of their reasoning through utilising a purposefully designed rubric to determine three reasoning actions; Analysing, Forming Conjectures and Generalising, and, Justifying and Logical Argument. These resources for planning and assessing reasoning not only offer teachers an avenue to examine their students’ mathematical reasoning, but also as a springboard to future planning for reasoning opportunities in all mathematics lessons.