Universal Screeners for Number Sense: Frequently Asked Questions for Families

Are you in Indiana? If so, please see our Indiana K-2 Family FAQ for information specific to the state’s early numeracy screening requirements.

The Universal Screeners for Number Sense, or USNS, are brief mathematics assessments designed to help teachers better understand how students think about numbers and mathematical ideas.

The screeners provide more than a score. They give teachers information about the strategies students use, the mathematical ideas they understand, and the skills and concepts they are ready to develop next.

The Universal Screeners for Number Sense are brief, standardized assessments that provide a snapshot of a student's foundational mathematics skills and understanding.

Students are assessed at different points during the school year. The fall assessment is conducted as an individual interview. Midyear and spring assessments include both an interview and written tasks.

During the interview, a teacher may ask a student to count, identify numbers, work with objects or representations, solve a problem, or explain mathematical thinking. This gives teachers an opportunity to listen to how students approach mathematics and observe the strategies they use.

Screening helps teachers better understand what students already know and where they may benefit from additional instruction or support.

Teachers can use the information to:

A screener is one source of information. Teachers also learn about students through classroom work, observations, conversations, curriculum assessments, and other evidence of learning.

Number sense is an understanding of numbers, quantities, relationships, and how numbers work together. It includes specific skills, such as reading numerals or calculating, but it also includes bigger mathematical ideas and the ways students' thinking develops over time. The Number Sense Lens used with the USNS organizes this learning into six primary facets across kindergarten through fifth grade:

Students do not necessarily work on all six facets at every grade level or during every screening window. The content changes as students develop and encounter new mathematical ideas.

This facet includes reading and writing numbers, saying number sequences forward and backward, skip counting, and representing number sequences and patterns on number tracks and number lines.

The numbers students work with become increasingly complex as they move through the grades.

For example:

These tasks help teachers understand whether students see numbers as part of an organized system and can recognize patterns and relationships within that system.

This facet includes counting and cardinality, covered tasks, structures and relationships, flexibility and fluency, and reasoning with objects and drawings. Teachers are interested not only in whether a student gets an answer correct, but also in how the student solves the problem.

For example:

As students develop, teachers look for increasingly flexible and efficient strategies rather than continued reliance on counting by ones.

Place value includes understanding ones, tens, and hundreds; number magnitude and comparison; computation, equations, and procedures; and, in later grades, decimal place value.

Place-value understanding develops gradually as students learn how numbers are composed and how the position of a digit affects its value.

For example:

These tasks help teachers see whether students understand how our base-ten number system works, rather than simply whether they can follow a procedure.

This facet includes both computation and modeling or representing multiplication and division situations. As students develop multiplication and division number sense, they move beyond treating each fact or calculation as an isolated problem. They begin using relationships among numbers and operations.

For example, a student might be told:

A student can use the known relationship to reason that one group of 4 must be removed from 80.

Tasks such as these help teachers understand whether students can represent multiplication and division and use known relationships to solve new problems.

The fractions facet includes magnitude, comparison, equivalence, representations, and computation. Fraction understanding develops as students learn to think of fractions as numbers with their own sizes and relationships, not simply as pieces of shapes.

Students may be asked to:

For example, students might consider what fraction could be located between 2 and 3 on a number line and then identify additional numbers that could fall between two given fractional values.

These ideas become increasingly important as students move through grades 3-5.

This facet includes both solving mathematical problems and creating meaningful mathematical problems.

Problem solving involves making sense of a situation, identifying important quantities and relationships, choosing a strategy, and explaining mathematical thinking. For example, students may be given a story problem and asked to determine what is happening mathematically, identify the relevant quantities, and solve the problem.

Problem posing asks students to create or complete mathematical situations or questions that match a given relationship. This helps teachers understand whether students can connect equations, quantities, and mathematical meaning. For example, students may be given an equation and asked to create a story or representation that demonstrates their understanding of the numerical relationships.

No. The six facets describe important areas of number sense across kindergarten through fifth grade, but they are not all assessed at every grade level or during every screening window.

The content changes as students develop. For example, early assessments emphasize counting, number sequences, addition and subtraction, and emerging place-value ideas. Multiplication, division, fractions, and more complex problem solving become increasingly prominent in later grades.

No. A screener is designed to help teachers understand what a student knows and can do at that point in time.

Students develop mathematical understanding at different rates, and development may not be even across every area. A student may demonstrate strong understanding in one facet while still developing ideas in another.

That information is useful. It helps teachers identify strengths, determine what students are ready to learn next, and decide when additional support may be helpful.

The fall screener is completed through a brief, one-on-one interview with a teacher. This gives the teacher an opportunity to listen to the student's mathematical thinking and observe how the student approaches different tasks.

Midyear and spring screeners are broader assessments of grade-level content. They include both interview and written components and help teachers look for growth while gathering information that can support instructional planning.

Depending on the task and grade level, students may work with numbers, objects, drawings, equations, number lines, or mathematical situations.

USNS tasks use scoring guidance specific to each question. Teachers consider the student's response and, when appropriate, the strategy or reasoning the student demonstrates.

Looking closely at individual tasks can provide important instructional information. Two students may need different kinds of support even when their overall performance appears similar.

The goal is not simply to produce a score, but to help teachers better understand student thinking.

The information from the screeners helps teachers understand each student's strengths and identify skills and concepts that may be important to develop next.

Teachers can use the results to:

How districts and schools use USNS results may vary. If you have specific questions about how USNS assessment results are to be used, please contact your child's teacher.

How results are shared with families depends on the school or district. Schools using Forefront may provide family letters or other reports that explain student performance and share ideas for supporting learning at home.

If you receive a family letter or report and have questions about what the information means, your child's teacher can provide additional context about the assessment and what they are seeing during classroom instruction.

You do not need to recreate the screener at home or turn mathematics practice into a test. Some of the best number sense learning happens naturally through conversations, games, and everyday situations. You might:

Keep activities brief and manageable. The goal is to build curiosity, flexibility, and confidence with mathematics rather than simply practice getting answers quickly.

Number sense is much more than memorizing math facts. It helps students understand what numbers mean, recognize patterns and relationships, solve problems flexibly, and explain their mathematical thinking.

Strong number sense provides an important foundation for future mathematics and helps students approach increasingly complex problems with understanding and confidence.

Your child's teacher is the best starting point. They can explain what they observed during the assessment, how the results connect with other classroom learning, and what instructional next steps may be appropriate.

Remember that a screening assessment provides one snapshot of a student's mathematical development. Teachers consider screening results alongside the many other things they learn about students throughout the school year.