Year 4 Reasoning About Number
No one would argue against knowing number facts and that being able to calculate efficiently is vitally important. But there is much more to maths than this. It is no use being able to calculate accurately if you do not know what calculation to carry out – most of the maths we use in the real world does not come as a neatly displayed calculation. This is where reasoning and problem solving becomes important and why we have a separate section for each year group called Reasoning/Problem Solving.
Three of the key elements in this are:
* choosing the appropriate operation(s) to solve word problems and number puzzles
* deciding whether the calculations can be done mentally or need formal written methods
* explaining and recording how the problem was solved
Our latest sets of worksheets for Year 4 on reasoning about number include asking for explanations of how answers are reached and how children know that they have reached the correct answer.