Year 6 Maths BLP Reasoning Afternoon

BLP muscles used:

Collaboration 10 (checking the team’s progress).

Capitalising 5 (creating own resources to solve a problem)

Questioning 5 (to reason with evidence, arguments and actions)

We had a Maths / BLP reasoning afternoon, where we had to solve complex BIDMAS problems. Not only did we have to remember what BIDMAS was but also how to solve this in a variety of ways. Using concrete objects, we have to show the maths calculations clearly. This was difficult as everyone had different ideas, but we compromised and ensured that we worked together to ensure we were successful. After, we had to use our knowledge of the steps to success pictorially. We had to discuss exactly how to do this: for example, for the calculation 2 x 3 we drew three lots of 2 sweets. But after we sat back and evaluated our work, we discovered that we hadn’t actually answered the question. Although the answer was correct, we had actually solved 3 x 2 and not 2 x 3. So we changed it to 2 lots of three sweets to actually represent the problem. With Mrs Smith, we discussed this and how this could confuse younger learners and cause misconceptions in knowledge and skills. The written methods were the easiest as we do these all of the time; we just needed to remember the BIDMAS rule. It was a great afternoon and we discovered that we must always remember the basic math rules and be careful with seemingly easy questions, in order to be successful in more complicated problems.