Number System

Author: Student Achievement Partners

  • Description
  • Files

This mini-assessment is designed to illustrate aspects of standards 6.NS.B.2 and 6.NS.B.3, specifically the expectation that students perform computations with multi-digit numbers fluently. This mini-assessment is designed for teachers to use either in the classroom, for self-learning, or in professional development settings to:

  • Evaluate students’ progress toward some of the skills required by 6.NS.B.2 and 6.NS.B.3 to ensure that students have mastered the expected computation skills;
  • Gain knowledge about assessing computation at the depth expected at grade 6; and
  • Illustrate CCSS-aligned assessment problems.

  • Making the Shifts

    How does this mini-assessment exemplify the instructional Shifts required by CCSSM?

    Focus This mini-assessment addresses culminating content that spans several grades building toward computational fluency. While these standards are from an additional cluster of grade 6, the work with operations is a consolidation of learning from earlier grades and provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate fluency with whole numbers and decimals for all four operations. These are all key components of the  major work of sixth grade
    Coherence Addresses content from across grades as the questions require students to add, subtract, multiply, or divide multi-digit whole numbers and decimals.
    Rigor

    Conceptual Understanding: secondary in this mini-assessment

    Procedural Skill and Fluency: primary in this mini-assessment

    Application: not targeted in this mini-assessment
  • A Closer Look

    As shown by this mini-assessment, students can and should continue to draw on their conceptual understanding both to evaluate reasonableness of computations and to use opportunistic strategies instead of procedures for problems that lend themselves to such approaches. This is true for 6.NS.B.2 and 6.NS.B.3 which are the capstone of work with operations in earlier grades. This consolidation of learning provides an opportunity for Grade 6 students to demonstrate fluency with whole numbers and decimals for all four operations. This mini-assessment centers on the required fluencies in the grade 6 standards. The problems highlight the four operations with whole numbers, decimals and fractions.
    The standards call for the fluency using the standard algorithm for each operation. In earlier grades, the standards built students’ understanding of the mathematics leading to the standard algorithms. In grade 6, students should be using them to perform fast and accurate calculations. Students who leave grade 6 without meeting the expectations of 6.NS.B.2 and 6.NS.B.3 may have difficulty with operations on all rational numbers called for in the grade 7 standards and may struggle to evaluate the reasonableness of their answers to computation problems.

Supplemental Resources