Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment 1st grade MAP test score

DS7 is in 1st grade and scored a 233 on his Spring MAP test. Based on some initial searches, we have a concern that 2nd grade Math might become boring pretty quickly. We reached out to his school asking for some advice on what we could do over the summer to prepare him for 2nd grade and also continue to encourage his Math progress. We got no response which was disappointing.
Would love to hear what people in a similar situation did to try and ensure that a kid remains challenged. I've read about skipping grades, but I don't think he is mature enough for us to consider that.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Map: know that he might not show a level of growth in the next couple of tests and that when they switch tests scores often go down or stagnant. That said, I love MAP and think it has real value. One of my kids never seem to fluctuate % wise and one does test quite a lot. All these things are normal.

For mathy kids, some kids are really interested in going deeply into a subject and some kids focus more progression. We’ve enjoyed many books from Critical Leaning Company and one of my kids really like Newmark Common Core series after a teacher told him dismissively that he had “holes”. Some sections of the grade level books he would skip because he knew but sometimes he would feel in holes.

Also, you might look into CTY for math enrichment.

Beast academy has some excellent material available as workbooks or online. My 7 yo hasn’t tried their online courses, but he really enjoys the books (in little spurts when feeling mathy). We also like the math superstars problem sets. Those can be found free online. Both of these take problems to a challenging enough level, and have material up through 5th grade.

Im guessing he took MAP k-2. My son had the exact score for spring 1st grade. My son is accelerated 4 years in math now. He is going into 8th grade and will be taking math at the high school... algebra II. Our district starts compacting math in 3rd grade so that the accelerated track places the kids into algebra I in 7th grade. We were able to get further acceleration in 6th grade so he took geometry in 7th. He maxed out MAP 2-5 as a 3rd grader and switched to 6 plus. We were told to expect his score to drop (we switched for spring 3rd grade) and instead it went up.

I highly recommend Beast Academy. It was specifically developed not long ago for math-advanced kids in grades 2-5. Students that are interested can then transition to AoPS, a long-standing advanced math site for middle and high school students. My D didn't find out about it until 7th grade, but it has been very beneficial.

(OT aside - frannieandejsmom, what's the standard math sequence at your school? My D had Algebra II in 8th but was just one year ahead of the normal honors track, and we chose not to jump her one more year with some of her peers. 4 years ahead means Algebra 2 is standard for HS Seniors? I'm just curious, as our mainline math sequence is Calc. senior year.)

regular math track is algebra in 9th grade geometry in 10th algebra II in 11th with pre calc in 12th. honors track has algebra in 8th. Advanced track has algebra in 7th. The magnet track has algebra in 6th

Cranberry. Same district as Frannie. The algebra 2 course taken Senior year is not the same class as 8th graders take. the Algebra 2 is the lowest math you can take to graduate. The Accelerated Algebra 2 class taken in 8th grade (and 9th and 10th grade is not the same). there are about 10 different tracks of math you can take.

My DS got a 239 on his spring MAP (2-5) in first grade, almost the same score as yours. He just finished 3rd grade with a score of 256 on the MAP 6+.

DS also lacks the maturity to grade skip. What worked for us this year was having him do Beast Academy at school. We chose to have him work one year ahead, so he did BA 4th grade this year.

So while he didn't necessarily learn any new math, he was working on challenging, interesting stuff using the math he already knows. This worked out well because we were told that there would be no time available for anyone to teach him.

In the end he was not bored, in fact he was very happy with his math work. He brought his book home daily and I graded it for him and we discussed anything he got wrong or needed extra help with.

We plan to continue the same next year, I already bought the 5th grade books. No idea what the future will look like for him, but for elementary this solution has so far worked well.