Better buy

This paper reports on the oral responses given by primary school students to a mathematical assessment task, Better Buy. It is from a larger study which documented thetypical language that Year 4 and Year 8 students used when giving mathematical explanations and justifications to four tasks. The responses to this task were particularlyinteresting as students were surprisingly consistent in the structure of their explanations, when providing an accurate response. However, students depending on their age, gender and socio-economic background gave different sorts of responses. It seemed that Year 8 boys from high decile schools were most likely to give explicit, extended responses which were accurate whilst Year 4 girls at low decile schools were most likely to give simple and inaccurate responses. The consistency of responses plus the distinct differences between groups of students was not as great in any of the other tasks which were studied. This paper reports on the text structures used in responses to Better Buy and investigates the features of the task itself which may have contributed to the consistency in text structures and the distinctions between groups.