StopV: A Five Minute Assessment of Place Value

When exploring the learning needs of young children in literacy we look at how well they understand and can manipulate our system of written language. We can do the same in numeracy by assessing understanding and manipulation of our place value number system. This set of tasks, the Six Tasks of Place Value (STOPV), takes five minutes to administer and can give you direct insight into a student's understanding of our number system and therefore what teaching is needed. It can be administered to students generally from Year 3, as this is when this understanding is expected to be achieved by most students (Board of Studies, NSW, 1998). This is also when some students' conceptual understanding and procedural learning of arithmetic becomes less integrated and can contribute to mathematical learning difficulties (Hopkins, 2011). The highly integral nature of understanding place value numeration as it is applied in arithmetic and problem solving is acknowledged (Kamii, 1989; Steffe & Cobb, 1988; Wright, 1996) as is the range of ages at which students can establish this understanding, if they do (Cockcroft, 1982). This set of tasks therefore aims to support teachers in validly exploring their students' understanding so teachers can ensure this crucial conceptual aspect of mathematical learning is well established.