Assessing Multiplicative Thinking
The document below has three assessments, one each for grades 3 through 5. They were designed to capture a student's progress from thinking additively to more multiplicatively. The protocols are largely the same with just variations in number size. Some additional tasks are added to the latter grades. The intent is to assess understanding of the base ten system through tasks that reveal the individual's knowledge of place value, decomposition of number, thinking in scale, organizing around landmarks of ten, and one's understanding of the equal sign and capacity to think relationally. It is a student's strategy level and fluency profile across tasks that is the point of the assessment so that it can inform instructional decision-making.