The Early Math Assessment @ School (EMA@School) is a numeracy screener that was designed to identify students in kindergarten to grade 3 who are underachieving relative to their peers. For students in grades 2 and 3, it includes four foundational skills: number comparison, writing numbers from dictation, placement of numbers on a 0-1000 number line, ordering numbers. It also includes one mathematical outcome: arithmetic fluency.
Comparing Numbers Subtask:
Measures how quickly and efficiently students can compare magnitudes. Students were instructed to cross out the larger digit of a pair of digits (e.g., which is larger, 4 or 7?).
Writing Numbers Subtask:
Assesses students’ abilities to translate between verbal number words and Arabic numerals; also known as ‘transcoding’. Students were asked to write down a total of 13 numerals as teachers read them aloud.
Numbers on the Number Line Subtask:
Used to assess students’ estimation accuracy when placing a target number along a number line ranging from 0-1000. This measures students’ understanding of ordinal relations among numbers (i.e., 5 comes after 4 and before 6) and their proportional reasoning skills (i.e., 75 is three-quarters of 100 so one must divide the number line into fourths).
Ordering of Numbers Subtask:
Measures how quickly and efficiently students can judge whether three-digit number sequences are increasing in order (e.g., is 2, 4, 6 in ascending order?). Students were instructed to draw a check mark beside the sequence if the numbers were all increasing, or an X if the numbers were not all increasing.
Number Facts Subtask:
Assesses students’ abilities to solve addition and subtraction facts to 18 (e.g., 2 + 3, 12 – 6).