Year Nine Geometrical Reasoning Mini-pack

This unit on geometrical reasoning from the National Strategies aims to make a significant contribution to the development of teaching and learning of geometrical reasoning. It was planned for the end of Year Nine in order to provide an opportunity to draw together students’ existing geometrical knowledge within a more rigorous framework and to form a bridge to Key Stage Four. As developments in schools evolve over time, it was expected that some of the content should move to earlier in Year Nine, perhaps to the autumn term, or even into Year Eight.

The emphasis of the unit is on reasoning rather than content, much of which may be familiar to students. The approach allows greater rigour to be developed by re-establishing familiar definitions and properties into a logical hierarchy. The unit Includes an outline of two teaching phases and supporting resources, including supplementary notes, prompts for activities and a problem bank.

Phase 1 develops this hierarchy using images and language in the form of visualisations and build-ups to model the presentation of a chain of reasoning both orally and in written form. These strategies are transferred to solving geometrical problems in phase 2.