MAP test practice by grade: what the NWEA MAP Growth test actually asks in kindergarten to grade 5, the instructional areas for reading and math at K-2 and 2-5 from NWEA's own blueprints, how many questions and how long, the official practice site, what honest practice looks like, and a 24-question printable practice set with answers

Parents search for MAP test practice by grade because the school says the test is coming and gives nothing to prepare with. That is by design: NWEA builds MAP Growth to measure what a child can do, not what they rehearsed, and it publishes the blueprints rather than practice tests. This page is built from those blueprints, with NWEA's own practice site explained and a practice set written to the areas, so the practice is the right practice.

Download the MAP practice set (PDF) (24 questions for K-1, grade 2 and grades 3 to 5 written to NWEA's instructional areas for reading and math, with answers, and the areas by grade; two pages, free).

What the test is

MAP Growth is computer-adaptive: it starts near the grade's average and moves up after right answers and down after wrong ones, so every child sees a different test and about half the questions are hard for them. It is untimed. The result is a RIT score on a scale that runs across grades (the norms by grade are on their own page), and the report breaks it into instructional areas, each marked as a relative strength or weakness. NWEA's test summary gives the sizes:

Kindergarten to grade 2: the instructional areas

NWEA's Common Core content sheet for MAP Growth K-2 (6 to 8 questions per area; the computer reads the questions aloud):

The K-2 reading areas in the Common Core edition are named Foundational Skills, Language and Writing, Literature and Informational Text, and Vocabulary Use and Functions; the math areas Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations, Measurement and Data, and Geometry. NWEA also gives K-2 schools two short screening tests for new students (early literacy, 33 items: phonological awareness, visual discrimination and phonics, concepts of print; early numeracy, 34 items: number sense and computation) and skills checklists on single skills (rhyming, letter identification, phoneme manipulation, consonant blends, number sense to 10 and so on) that a teacher can give at any time.

Grades 2 to 5: the instructional areas

NWEA's 2025 instructional areas (the Common Core and state editions use slightly different names):

The official practice site

NWEA's practice site at practice.mapnwea.org opens with a login the school provides and shows the real question formats and tools: multiple choice, drag and drop, fill-in, the on-screen calculator where allowed, the highlighter and the answer eliminator, with sample questions by grade band and subject. It is not scored and not adaptive. Its job is to make the first screen of the real test familiar, which for a six-year-old is the whole value of practice: a child who knows how to drag an answer and move on is being measured on reading, not on the mouse.

Honest practice, by grade

Kindergarten and grade 1. Letter sounds and blending, rhyming, counting and comparing, adding and taking away with objects, and listening to stories with questions after. Ten minutes of the practice site once, then the skills.

Grade 2. Reading a short passage and saying what it is mostly about and how a character feels; vocabulary from context; two-digit addition and subtraction, place value, telling time, shapes. The instructional areas on the last report say which.

Grades 3 to 5. Multiplication and division facts, fractions and decimals, area and perimeter, simple equations, reading tables and graphs; main idea and supporting detail, inference, point of view, the purpose of text features, word meaning from context. Read every day across fiction and nonfiction.

What does not help is a bought "MAP practice test": the real test adapts, so no fixed set of questions resembles it, and the items sold are a third party's guesses at a test whose items are secure.

The practice set

The printable has 24 questions written to the instructional areas above, eight for K-1, six for grade 2 and ten for grades 3 to 5, half reading and half math, with answers. A sample:

They are written by us to the published areas, not taken from the test; their use is to show a parent what each area asks at each age, so that the real practice, the reading and the maths, goes where the report points.

The two other diagnostics American schools give report differently (i-Ready by grade-level placement, Star by percentile band) and sample the same standards; the honest practice is the same.

Download the MAP practice set (PDF) (the 24 questions with answers and the areas by grade; two pages, free).

Where to get help

A 1-on-1 online class with a tutor who holds a master's degree and teaches the US curriculum from Grade 1 number work to AP Calculus, chemistry and physics, at 7 am before school, after 4 pm and on weekend mornings, US time, for US$10 to $13 an hour: the report read together in the free 30-minute first class, the domain or the skill the score is really pointing at found, and the term spent on exactly that, with the method written out the way the school marks it. How online tutoring from India to the USA works, or the 1-on-1 online tutoring page.

Sources: NWEA, MAP Growth K-2 reading and mathematics content, Common Core State Standards edition (the screening, skills checklist and growth components; the K-2 literacy and mathematics areas; 43 items per subject with 6 to 8 per instructional area; the screening tests of 33 and 34 items; the skills checklists); NWEA, MAP Growth NWEA 2025 Instructional Areas (Reading K-2, Reading 2-5, Math K-2, Math 2-5, Language 2+); NWEA, Summary of Test Types (43 questions in two 20-minute sessions for K-2; 40 to 43 questions and 45 to 60 minutes for 2-5 and 6+; screening 19 to 20 questions); NWEA, MAP Growth practice site. The practice questions are ours, written to NWEA's areas. Fetched 11 November 2026.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →