Reasoning Books are very beneficial to students learning and understanding mathematics. Often times in math, students are most focused on finding the correct answers or quick solution to problems or questions rather than gaining understanding. As teachers, we can help guide students in the right direction by starting reasoning books with our students. Reasoning books should be started at the beginning of the year and teachers should model how to create reasoning books by going over good samples, adequate samples, and poor samples. Through modeling a good reasoning book, students will be able to better develop their reasoning book skills. These reasoning books are great for students' communication skills and helps students focus on the bigger pictures in mathematics. In these books, students will write responses and reasonings to specific mathematical problems. In these books, students will use data, drawings, reasonings, justifications, etc. to explain a mathematical argument. These reasonings should be able to be read by anyone and should explain exactly how the answer or solution was found. Reasoning books help students to answer the more in depth questions about math such as "how do we know?" and "will this always be true for every problem?" etc. The ideas in the book should focus on the important concepts in mathematics that students have difficulty understanding, concepts that provide a bigger picture, and ideas that relate to real-life context. By creating reasoning books, students will value mathematical learning through reasoning early on in the semester. This book will also help students focus on the conceptual side of mathematics rather than just formulas and correct answers for the entire semester/class.
As a teacher, this provides a valuable context for student learning and teacher assessment. By viewing the reasoning books, teachers can clearly see exactly how the child was thinking and where they need help at in their thinking. As teachers, we often overlook ideas that we assume our students know. When reasoning books are introduced, students have the opportunity to explain their understanding of the concepts and how they got to their final conclusion/answer. We can guide students by modeling examples of good reasoning entries, showing them adequate examples of reasonings, and also reasonings that need extra work. When students understand how to write clear reasoning entries, it will greatly benefit their conceptual knowledge for math. This provides a great context for teachers at the beginning of the year and will provide students with higher expectations for learning rather than just 'finding the correct solution.'
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