Skip to main content

Are Your Students Ready for Grade 1 Math?


As a first-grade teacher, have you ever felt the frustration of not knowing which math skills your new students are bringing to Grade !?  Do they recognize numbers?  Can they count?  If so, how far?  Do they have one-to-one correspondence when they count?  Can they solve simple addition and subtraction problems?  Do they have critical thinking skills? Do they recognize patterns?  Where do you begin to teach?

To solve this problem, I decided to develop my own "test". The Readiness for Grade 1 Math Assessment was created while I was taking my Specialist in Primary/Junior Math.  It was field-tested by teaching students in the Greater Toronto area and later used by my school board. 

The math assessment is based on the Principles of Counting which are fundamental concepts that help us understand how to count and quantify objects. Here are some key principles:

  1. Stable Order: The first principle of counting involves using a list of words to count in a repeatable order. 

  2. One-to-One Correspondence:  When counting objects, each one has only one number name.

  3. Cardinality:  The last number counted is how many objects are in the set.

  4. Order Irrelevance:  Objects can be counted in any order.

  5. Conservation:  The number of objects remains the same regardless of their arrangement.


Other topics assessed include:
  • estimation
  • abstraction (the quantity remains the same regardless of the differences in the other objects counted)
  • movement is magnitude
  • number relationships
  • problem solving (addition and subtraction)
  • sort and classify
  • ordering objects
  • recognize and print numerals to 10

The Readiness for Grade 1 is a one-on-one assessment to determine the level of readiness for Grade 1 math in students either at the end of Kindergarten or the beginning of Grade 1.  It is similar to doing a reading assessment where the teacher asks the students to do an activity and then records the responses.  There is a question sheet, a response sheet where a percentage is scored, and then a rubric.  The rubric does not evaluate the student but rather describes what the student can do.  For example, if a child receives 75%, that means that the child has considerable knowledge and skills, problem-solving, application of procedures, and communication skills and, therefore, is ready for Grade 1.  The response sheet highlights the areas in which the student requires support.

The information that comes from this assessment helps you to determine which skills you need to focus on at the beginning of the year, particularly in number sense.  For example, it would identify which students needed more work on one-to-one correspondence when counting so that I could address those needs in a small group or as a whole class. 

The assessment also gives a baseline to track individual student progress for reporting purposes.

Because the test is a one-on-one assessment, it does take you away from your class like a reading test. I would usually have students working in math centers (see the FREE Patterning task cards for Grade 1 available in this blog) while I worked with individual students.

If you know that most of your students have a strong skill set coming from Kindergarten, you can use the assessment just on those who appear to be weaker to identify their needs and determine the next steps for their learning.

In conclusion, the Readiness for Grade 1 Math Assessment provides detailed information on how ready your new students are to learn the Grade 1 math curriculum expectations and where to focus your instruction, particularly for those who may be struggling.  Click this link for more information:


You may also be interested in our number sense and other math products for Grade 1 Ontario Math Curriculum 2022 in our store:

A Cloud Full of Learning Teaching Resources | Teachers Pay Teachers















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using Math Manipulatives in the Primary Classroom

  Learning math in the primary grades should be an active experience that involves hands-on activities, exploration, and talking.  That is how young children learn.  While rules and procedures are part of effective classroom management, a compromise is needed between keeping a quiet classroom where students sit at their seats all day and developmentally appropriate active student learning.   That means it's going to be organized, engaging, and fun with "controlled noisiness", as I like to call it.  This blog post will discuss some ways to make your primary classroom an effective learning place.  Let's start with manipulatives. Math manipulatives are objects that students can manipulate to help them understand mathematical concepts. They are an effective teaching tool in primary classrooms because they engage students and help make abstract concepts more concrete.  Introduce manipulatives :  Begin by introducing the manipulatives that stu...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Ace Teaching Data in Grade 2: We Make It Easy!

When I taught Grade 2 Data Management with the Ontario 2005 math curriculum, the biggest challenge was mastering the Venn Diagram.  For many students, that was difficult enough, often taking up to two weeks before they were confident in their skill level.  The surveys, tally tables, line plots, bar graphs, and pictographs were based on organizing and displaying data according to one attribute which were demanding enough. Now, as I read through the new Ontario Curriculum 2020 for Data Literacy and Probability, I am struck by the degree of difficulty that the Grade 2 student is expected to understand.  The Venn Diagram is only a small part of it.  How are we expected to teach it?   Students are expected to use  two-way tally tables, Venn Diagrams, and Carroll diagrams for collecting and organizing data. Line plots, bar graphs, and pictographs display two attributes instead of one. Students have to ask survey questions with two attributes such as 1) wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

How My Students Really Became Excellent Problem Solvers

Growing up, I was pretty good at math except for problem-solving.  When I think about it, we were just sort of expected to be able to solve problems if we knew the math.  We weren't actually taught how to solve them.  Thank goodness that has changed! Problem-solving is an essential part of mathematics education, and it is a skill that can be developed and nurtured at an early age. In the Ontario math curriculum for the primary grades, problem-solving is a significant focus, with students expected to develop problem-solving strategies and apply them to a range of mathematical situations. Because I didn't think I was good at problem-solving, I made it a priority to learn how to teach it.  In fact, most of my math programming focused on solving problems.  And my students really became excellent problem solvers! This was my approach to teaching problem-solving: Emphasize problem-solving strategies:  Teach students a variety of problem-solving strategies, suc...
Post a Comment
Read more