Verbal Addition Overview
The Verbal Addition test assesses the student's ability and automaticity in responding to basic addition facts. The test is completely verbal, and no student stimulus materials are used. As the student responds to each item, the examiner marks any errors on his/her score form. The resulting score is the number of items responded to correctly.
This measure is only designed for screening. Progress monitoring is not available.
Test Construction
The test consists of 14 items in which students are asked to solve basic addition problems (e.g., 4 + 4?). First, students are provided with an example item which gives them the opportunity to practice responding to the item type. Students are then instructed to, “Listen carefully, and try to answer as many problems as you can." In collaboration with early mathematics teaching specialists in a number of school districts, seven categories of problem types were identified and items were developed to align along a continuum of difficulty levels. Two items were created for each of the seven categories: partitions of 5 (e.g., 2 + 3), partitions of numbers to 10 (e.g., 3 + 7), doubles (e.g., 4 + 4), adding through 10 (e.g., 9 + 3), 10 plus (e.g., 10 + 3), partitions of numbers to 20 (e.g., 14 + 2), and partitions of 20 (e.g., 15 + 5).
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 assessment.
- Select the VA column from the earlyMath Screening page.
Here is what the teacher sees when administering the earlyMath - Verbal Addition subtest.
For more information about the earlyMath - Verbal Addition subtest complete the online earlyMath 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 course tile.
Then select the Verbal Addition option on the vertical menu. Complete Lessons 1 through 8 in order to certify in the earlyMath Verbal Addition subtest.
