Third Grade Math Proficiency Test with Answer Guide

What Do I Need to Know about Third Grade Math Proficiency Tests?

What Is a Proficiency Test?

At the third grade level, it is very likely that your child has never experienced a proficiency test before. However, your child should not be nervous because proficiency tests are intended to check a student's level of understanding and the academic growth that he or she has accomplished. In addition, a proficiency test will help to gauge how effective a school system's method of instruction is.

How Will a Third Grade Proficiency Test Be Formatted?

The questions on a proficiency test are derived from the standards that are used by a specific state. For instance, many states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, so your child's third grade proficiency test may be aligned to those standards. To find out more about standards, visit your state's department of education website.

Your child should expect a proficiency test to primarily contain multiple-choice questions. To help your third grader be as successful as possible on this assessment, teach him or her a few test-taking strategies. For example, it will be important for your child to read the entire question and all of the choices before selecting an answer. You may also teach your third grader to eliminate the 2 choices that he or she knows are not correct, and to then choose the correct answer from the remaining choices.

What Skills Will Be on the Proficiency Test?

Your child should be able to interpret whole number products and quotients and use multiplication and division to solve word problems. As your third grader works with base ten numbers, he or she should know how to use place value to round numbers to the nearest 10 or 100. You will also want to ensure that your student can fluently add and subtract within 1,000.

At the third grade level, your student will be tested on his or her ability to represent fractions on a number line and understand why 2 fractions are equal. Your child will also need to know how to write a whole number as a fraction and how to use symbols when comparing fractions that have like numerators or denominators. Within the geometry standard, your child should know how to partition a shape into equal parts and how to express each area with a fraction. You will want to be sure that your child can recognize a rhombus, a square and a rectangle as examples of quadrilaterals.

The third grade proficiency test will also require your child to know how to tell and write time to the nearest minute and how to solve problems that involve adding and subtracting time intervals. Your student will be tested on how to use standard units to measure and estimate the mass of an object, the area and perimeter of figures and the volume of a liquid.

Where Can I Find Practice Proficiency Tests and Answer Guides?

Although many online sources provide practice tests with answer guides, you will want to be sure that the source you use is a reliable one. Perhaps the best source for online practice tests and answer guides is your state's department of education website. While you may want to start with the practice test for the state you live in, it is perfectly reasonable to branch out to other state's sites. Keep in mind, you may want to pick and choose specific parts of the practice tests to focus your attention on. Using a variety of reliable sources will help you to customize your home practice sessions to meet your child's individual needs.