Encouraging students' ability to reason can be looked at through the lens of both oral and written representations. In 2022, the author participated in the first intake of the Teacher Excellence Program run by the Victorian Teaching Academy. Being part of an in-depth professional learning program challenged the author's teaching practices to focus more on 'how' students arrive at answers, rather than whether they got solutions correct. The program conveyed how important effective assessment is, and how assessment needs to accommodate specific learning needs and strengths. The inquiry cycle had to develop teaching practice by focusing on assessing student thinking, evaluate the growth in student learning achieved, and adjust future learning to address the gaps or misconceptions evident. To gather the initial data, the structure for the assessment had to be presented in a format where the students could show their strategies through both visual and written representations. All of the students showed an improvement in their explanation of the strategies that they were using, with greater emphasis on 'how' they arrived at answers evident in both their oral and written representations.