Multiplication in MAP for first grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

I never saw anything about it in DC's Eureka book but just assumed it was something they should know so started teaching it to them myself. I consider this somewhat uninteresting and although hey mostly get it, I wouldn't say they got it down perfectly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

What you're saying makes sense to me (I'm the PP to whom you're responding). This is not a humblebrag, but my kid has been in the 99.9th since 1st grade and we do zero enrichment (at least zero intentional enrichment) and she's not getting it from TV or some other place, because she doesn't have that kind of exposure. I totally buy the argument that DH and I exposed her to some concepts incidentally, like maybe an analog clock, making change (?), fractions/percentages (we like to cook and shop), etc. I doubt we ever showed her a square root sign or mentioned isosceles triangles or most other "advanced" ideas, though. Maybe my kid is really good at guessing, IDK. I had assumed most of what got her there was deciphering since she didn't have that much outside exposure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

What you're saying makes sense to me (I'm the PP to whom you're responding). This is not a humblebrag, but my kid has been in the 99.9th since 1st grade and we do zero enrichment (at least zero intentional enrichment) and she's not getting it from TV or some other place, because she doesn't have that kind of exposure. I totally buy the argument that DH and I exposed her to some concepts incidentally, like maybe an analog clock, making change (?), fractions/percentages (we like to cook and shop), etc. I doubt we ever showed her a square root sign or mentioned isosceles triangles or most other "advanced" ideas, though. Maybe my kid is really good at guessing, IDK. I had assumed most of what got her there was deciphering since she didn't have that much outside exposure.

Sorry, "she doesn't have that kind of exposure" sounds weird! I just meant we don't have TV, she doesn't have a tablet, etc., she doesn't consume any media we don't know about unless it's at school.... not in a controlling way, she just doesn't have the opportunity. She doesn't have older siblings, other caregivers, babysitters, etc. who could have mentioned the concepts. She could have gotten it from graphic novels, lol, but otherwise I am not sure where she would have gotten it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

I never saw anything about it in DC's Eureka book but just assumed it was something they should know so started teaching it to them myself. I consider this somewhat uninteresting and although hey mostly get it, I wouldn't say they got it down perfectly.

She demanded I teach her after the test. We don’t own an analog clock and she hadn’t been in the classroom at that point. I have no idea if they ever covered it or will. Possibly not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

I never saw anything about it in DC's Eureka book but just assumed it was something they should know so started teaching it to them myself. I consider this somewhat uninteresting and although hey mostly get it, I wouldn't say they got it down perfectly.

She demanded I teach her after the test. We don’t own an analog clock and she hadn’t been in the classroom at that point. I have no idea if they ever covered it or will. Possibly not.

Analog clocks are cheap!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

What you're saying makes sense to me (I'm the PP to whom you're responding). This is not a humblebrag, but my kid has been in the 99.9th since 1st grade and we do zero enrichment (at least zero intentional enrichment) and she's not getting it from TV or some other place, because she doesn't have that kind of exposure. I totally buy the argument that DH and I exposed her to some concepts incidentally, like maybe an analog clock, making change (?), fractions/percentages (we like to cook and shop), etc. I doubt we ever showed her a square root sign or mentioned isosceles triangles or most other "advanced" ideas, though. Maybe my kid is really good at guessing, IDK. I had assumed most of what got her there was deciphering since she didn't have that much outside exposure.

Sorry, "she doesn't have that kind of exposure" sounds weird! I just meant we don't have TV, she doesn't have a tablet, etc., she doesn't consume any media we don't know about unless it's at school.... not in a controlling way, she just doesn't have the opportunity. She doesn't have older siblings, other caregivers, babysitters, etc. who could have mentioned the concepts. She could have gotten it from graphic novels, lol, but otherwise I am not sure where she would have gotten it.

During virtual schooling last Fall at the height of the pandemic, I watched our elementary school DD take the MAP-M test. While there are some higher level questions that kids can make educated guesses about, most of the questions that go beyond their grade level in my experience required some type of exposure - they weren't more difficult versions of grade-level math or conceptual questions that a good Math brain could reason out, but instead tested whether one knew a concept or not. Pretty basic stuff, just a wide breadth of topics covered that go well beyond the grade level curriculum. Not sure how a kid would be able to identify what an obtuse or right angle is without ever hearing that phrase. Same for symbols like finding the square root of something, or calculating what 3 to the 3rd power is. Adding fractions and finding the common denominator, knowing what a trapezoid is, etc. As others have pointed out, the same goes for stuff that a lot of Kindergarten students face on the test, like telling time on a clock or identifying the value of various coins. There are actually websites you can find where you can put in your child's current grade and MAP-M score and it will show you the kind of questions they likely received at the end of the test and will identify concepts that they will likely face at that level and beyond. We used that to prep our DD the next time around so she was exposed to the concepts that would keep her in the 99th percentile (our school's principal hates compacted math and does whatever he can to limit the amount of kids in the class so we're not taking any chances).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

I never saw anything about it in DC's Eureka book but just assumed it was something they should know so started teaching it to them myself. I consider this somewhat uninteresting and although hey mostly get it, I wouldn't say they got it down perfectly.

She demanded I teach her after the test. We don’t own an analog clock and she hadn’t been in the classroom at that point. I have no idea if they ever covered it or will. Possibly not.

I got a plastic one for teaching this off of Amzn

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Apparently mcps skipped the tellibg time, geometry and money units in Eureka and and teachers are supposed to backtrack and do them at the end of the year. I guess they made this decision to give kids more time to work on remedial skills or work on number bonds

Apparently they've been skipping the time unit for a while. Many of the MS kids I work with can't read an analog clock.

I’m the PP whose child could not tell time. This actually makes me feel better! I was wondering if it was one of those things kids were expected to come in knowing and felt like we failed her. FWIW she is better at multiplication than telling time…

I never saw anything about it in DC's Eureka book but just assumed it was something they should know so started teaching it to them myself. I consider this somewhat uninteresting and although hey mostly get it, I wouldn't say they got it down perfectly.

She demanded I teach her after the test. We don’t own an analog clock and she hadn’t been in the classroom at that point. I have no idea if they ever covered it or will. Possibly not.

I got a plastic one for teaching this off of Amzn

Oh I just drew one. It was fine. We still don’t own an analog clock but now that she is in an actual classroom they have a clock there. I didn’t refuse to teach her!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

What you're saying makes sense to me (I'm the PP to whom you're responding). This is not a humblebrag, but my kid has been in the 99.9th since 1st grade and we do zero enrichment (at least zero intentional enrichment) and she's not getting it from TV or some other place, because she doesn't have that kind of exposure. I totally buy the argument that DH and I exposed her to some concepts incidentally, like maybe an analog clock, making change (?), fractions/percentages (we like to cook and shop), etc. I doubt we ever showed her a square root sign or mentioned isosceles triangles or most other "advanced" ideas, though. Maybe my kid is really good at guessing, IDK. I had assumed most of what got her there was deciphering since she didn't have that much outside exposure.

Sorry, "she doesn't have that kind of exposure" sounds weird! I just meant we don't have TV, she doesn't have a tablet, etc., she doesn't consume any media we don't know about unless it's at school.... not in a controlling way, she just doesn't have the opportunity. She doesn't have older siblings, other caregivers, babysitters, etc. who could have mentioned the concepts. She could have gotten it from graphic novels, lol, but otherwise I am not sure where she would have gotten it.

During virtual schooling last Fall at the height of the pandemic, I watched our elementary school DD take the MAP-M test. While there are some higher level questions that kids can make educated guesses about, most of the questions that go beyond their grade level in my experience required some type of exposure - they weren't more difficult versions of grade-level math or conceptual questions that a good Math brain could reason out, but instead tested whether one knew a concept or not. Pretty basic stuff, just a wide breadth of topics covered that go well beyond the grade level curriculum. Not sure how a kid would be able to identify what an obtuse or right angle is without ever hearing that phrase. Same for symbols like finding the square root of something, or calculating what 3 to the 3rd power is. Adding fractions and finding the common denominator, knowing what a trapezoid is, etc. As others have pointed out, the same goes for stuff that a lot of Kindergarten students face on the test, like telling time on a clock or identifying the value of various coins. There are actually websites you can find where you can put in your child's current grade and MAP-M score and it will show you the kind of questions they likely received at the end of the test and will identify concepts that they will likely face at that level and beyond. We used that to prep our DD the next time around so she was exposed to the concepts that would keep her in the 99th percentile (our school's principal hates compacted math and does whatever he can to limit the amount of kids in the class so we're not taking any chances).

Nothing wrong with working with your kids on math or other concepts. Most important is to teach them math facts as MCPS doe snot.

Its an adaptive test so it will keep giving really hard problems till your child fails a few and then it stops the test. So, its a decent test overall but it really upsets some kids as they don't understand that toward the end they are not supposed to be able to answer the questions.

[Anonymous]

My kid hates the MAP tests for math and reading because they are so hard. Takes them more than one sitting to complete and they are frustrated because all their classmates finish faster. But since the test is adaptive and intends for you to get 50% wrong, it will feel like a very tough test. My kid always felt they didn’t do well while taking the tests - told me they almost cried because the questions were so unfamiliar. But these are tests where not knowing how to answer a lot of questions isn’t necessarily detrimental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

My youngest who is a first grader somehow taught themselves square roots and multiplication. It's possible they learn this from their older sibling. I actually try to discourage it but it makes them want to do it even more. I'm not kidding. I even caught them doing 5th grade Splash Math yesterday after I asked them to stick with 2nd grade. My point is some kids are determined and do this on their own.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In about third grade, mine came home asking about something that turned out to be square roots (lots of weird scratchings and awkward explanations went into figuring THAT out!).

They’ll always hit something totally unfamiliar before their test ends. That’s the entire point of it: it keeps getting progressively harder, until it hits a level where your kid misses more than 50% of the questions.

Yes! My kid is great at math but I guess we never taught her to tell time because on her first MAP she ended up getting a million questions about clocks…she was annoyed at us.

Yep. MAP is not a Math proficiency test. It’s purely a test of what a student has been exposed to. If your first grader answered every 1st grade level correctly but nothing else, they wouldn’t come close to the top percentiles. For that, you need to teach how to tell time on a clock, how to count money and coins, how to multiply and divide, etc.

The kid has to actually solve problems. That sounds like proficiency.

Sure - maybe I should have been more clear and said that it's not simply a "grade level" proficiency test. But my point stands - your first grader is not going to score at the top of the test unless you teach them what a quadrilateral is, how to identify an isosceles triangle, what the difference between obtuse and acute angles are, etc. At first grade, they are merely expected to be able to add and subtract per the MCPS curriculum. One could be quite proficient at that, but would yield a pretty pedestrian score.

I'm a NP and I don't know... You may very well be right and I've never taken the MAP myself, but I had inferred that above grade level, the test is easier if you have been directly instructed/exposed to certain concepts... but that if a child is bright, many of the problems can sort of be deciphered or good educated guesses made without having had previous exposure.

I’m the PP whose kid was stumped by the square root questions. If you don’t even know what the symbol means, it’s pretty hard to make an educated guess. Same for stuff like sine and cosine later on.

Mine often ended up getting far enough that she saw stuff she’d never encountered before, but still scored in the low-90th percentiles because she was able to make those educated guesses about harder or more complex versions of concepts she already knew (think three-digit addition when the current curriculum only covers single-digit). But she’d never shown much interest in math enrichment outside of school (more of a reader), so we didn’t do anything to introduce those extremely advanced concepts that might have gotten her to the high-90s.

My youngest who is a first grader somehow taught themselves square roots and multiplication. It's possible they learn this from their older sibling. I actually try to discourage it but it makes them want to do it even more. I'm not kidding. I even caught them doing 5th grade Splash Math yesterday after I asked them to stick with 2nd grade. My point is some kids are determined and do this on their own.

Why on earth would you discourage it?