First Steps in Mathematics

Diagnostic Assessment

*** Assessment completed by: ******

School: *** Elementary

Grade:*** Teacher: ***

Assessment Date: ***

Student: ***

Tasks: More, Get Me, Counting Principles, Skip Counting, Ice cream, Oral counting, Up to and Over Hundred, Saying the Number Sequence, Read, Write and Say, Subitizing, What’s Next?, Animals, How Did You Do it?,Circle the Biggest, Flexible Numbers, Empty Boxes, Dinosaur, Candy Tasks

Levels:

Phase / Age Typically Entered
Emergent
Matching / 3 - 5 years of age
Quantifying / 5 - 6 years of age
Partitioning / 6 - 9 years of age
Factoring / 9 - 11 years of age
Operating / 11 - 13 years of age

Summary of Assessment:

Strengths

  • Can compare collections and indicate which is larger
  • Able to use counting to get a small collection
  • Able to count a small collection, and includes each item once
  • Able to orally count into the 100 by 5’s and 10’s, but not into the 1000’s
  • Can say the number sequence forwards by 1’s beyond 116
  • Able to subitize to 4
  • Able to partition a small number, but missed several combinations
  • Able to add 2 digit numbers, relying on tally’s to combine (6 + 7)
  • Understands subtraction is the operation to find the difference
  • Able to record numbers read to her up to 100
  • Know verbally that 110 follows 109 but did not record this on the Up to and Over 100 sheet – wrote 200 instead of 109

Weaknesses:

  • Does not trust her count, and recounts from the start when the items are rearranged or she is asked a second time, “How many?”
  • Unable to count a collection by 2’s or 5’s (though has the chant for 5’s)
  • Unable to count backwards by 1’s and 10s when the starting point is greater than 900
  • Unable to subtract two digit numbers that involve regrouping
  • Does not understand that the position of a number refers to the quantity it represents in a non-standard format (does not have the concept of 10’s and 1’s – even in the Candy tasks)
  • Unable to record numbers beyond the 1000s

General Notes:

  • It was difficult for *** to sit still and focus on the tasks presented to **. She always wanted to be doing something – playing, touching or being silly.
  • When asked if she would like some help with her math, she said “Sure’.
  • She noted that ‘borrowing’ was too hard for her but she could do it with regrouping. (An interesting confusion between the terms.)

Diagnostic Level: *** Phase

Recommendations:

*** needs to trust the count when a collection is rearranged. *** also needs activities to help her develop her place value skills. At this point she does not understand the value of a digit based on its position. As she works on operations in the grade *** curriculum, *** needs to work with small numbers and begin to develop strategies involving subtraction. Until this is solid, multiplication and division will be quite difficult.

For skip counting:

p. 28 constant addition, skip counting a large collection and skip counting money

For Place Value:

p. 55 (all)

p. 56 – 57 (all)

p. 66-69

For Operations (See the Operations Book)

p. 43-45

p. p. 166-169

For all of the activities, keep the numbers quite small at first. Then as you build up to larger numbers, try to help *** look for patterns and summarize her understandings – journals, teaching someone younger etc.

C. VanderRee