Imagine your students working in groups around the room, collaborating and communicating about mathematics problems worth solving. Imagine that this happens every day. In Reasoning Together: Collaborative Problem-Solving Routines in Mathematics, Grades 1–3, Vivian Quan introduces five types of math routines designed for student collaboration:

• Target Number routines
• Story Problem routines
• Finish the Sentence routines
• Solve Multiple Ways routines
• Sorting and Counting routines

Like warm-up routines designed for the whole class, these Collaborative Problem-Solving Routines are meant to be continually revisited and riffed upon. More than any one-day task, these routines powerfully engage young learners as they hone their math understandings and collaborative skills.

Classroom teacher Vivian Quan knows productive math collaboration doesn’t just magically happen on its own. Instead, Reasoning Together illustrates how teachers can teach math content and collaboration side by side through focusing on five Collaborative Competencies:

• Doing a Fair Amount of Work
• Helping Without Taking Over
• Explaining So That Others Understand
• Persevering Together
• Building New Ideas Together

Full of sample problems to use tomorrow, planning templates, and classroom examples, Reasoning Together is a deeply practical book that teachers will return to again and again.

Vivian Quan is a teacher in Los Angeles, California. She has experience teaching and learning from prekindergarten through third-grade students, as well as supporting early childhood and elementary teachers in mathematics education. She believes that both learning mathematics and teaching mathematics can be spaces of agency, creativity, and joy.