Equal Partitioning Overview
The Equal Partitioning test assesses the student's ability to recognize if two groups of objects are equal quantities, and his/her ability to equally divide a set of manipulatives. As the student responds to/demonstrates each item, the examiner marks any errors on his/her score form. If the student responds/demonstrates correctly, the student receives a score of one. The resulting score is the number of items responded to correctly.
This measure is designed for screening. Progress monitoring is not available.
Test Construction
The Equal Partitioning test includes seven items, two of which have multiple parts. The first three items show a visual representation of a boy and a girl playing with blocks. The examiner asks, “Do they have the same number of blocks?” For two of these items in which the answer is “no,” students are then asked, “Who has the greater number of/fewer blocks?” If the student answers the first part of the question incorrectly, the second part is not asked and is marked as incorrect.
The subsequent four items involve the use of manipulatives. The same image of the boy and girl are shown and small blocks are placed in the identified positions on the sheet of paper. Items 4 and 5 ask the student to equally partition the blocks into two groups so that the boy and girl have the same number of blocks. Items 6 and 7 ask the student to equally partition the blocks into three groups so that three students can share the blocks. Students are allowed to use various strategies to solve the problem and these strategies can be noted by the examiner.
To administer this assessment for the purpose of universal screening:
- Log in to the FastBridge system as a teacher.
- Go to the Screening tab.
- Select the earlyMath English assessment.
- Select the EP column from the earlyMath English Screening page.
Here is what the teacher sees when administering the earlyMath English - Equal Partitioning subtest.
For more information about the earlyMath English - Equal Partitioning subtest complete the online earlyMath English course found in the Training & Resources section of the FastBridge system.
To do so, navigate to the Training & Resources tab, and click on the earlyMath English course tile.
Then select the Equal Partitioning option on the vertical menu. Complete Lessons 1 through 8 in order to certify in the earlyMath English Equal Partitioning subtest.