Reading the Question, and the Typed Answer Box

Year 5 NAPLAN numeracy is about forty questions in fifty minutes, so a bit over a minute each — quick, but not a race. Most questions give four options; about thirteen ask you to type a number instead. Around twenty-five of the forty carry a picture, a diagram, a graph or a table, and in those, reading the picture is the question. Nothing is taken off for a wrong answer, so you never leave one blank.

One word often decides the answer. Exactly, not, smallest, greatest, altogether, each, left over — each of those changes what counts as right. A dot in the square and the triangle but not the circle has to pass all three tests, and a shape with exactly two lines of symmetry is wrong if it has four. The habit that fixes this is saying the question back to yourself in your own words before you even look at the options.

About thirteen questions want a number typed into a box, and the unit is already printed beside it. So write just the number: two point five, not two point five metres. If the box says dollars, two dollars fifty-five is typed as two point five five, not two hundred and fifty-five. No words, no units, and no comma or space inside the number. Most typed-answer marks that go missing are lost here, not in the arithmetic.

When a division counts whole things — boxes, buses, tables, trips — you round up, because the leftovers still need one. A hundred and thirty-two books ten to a box is thirteen remainder two, and those two books still need a box, so fourteen. The same division answers three different questions, though: how many boxes are needed is fourteen, how many full boxes is thirteen, and how many are left over is two. The last line of the question tells you which.

A minute each means no question is worth five minutes. Read the last line first, because that is what is actually wanted; look at the picture, since most questions have one; and if you are stuck, cross out the options you know are wrong, which makes a guess worth one in two rather than one in four. Then answer anyway and move on, because a blank scores nothing. Estimating first catches the answer that is ten times too big. Quiz and exercises now.