School Improvement in Maryland

This Week’s MSA Item

MSA Items of the week can be used in a variety of ways by teachers, students, parents, tutors and other interested parties. They may be used as warm-up activity at the beginning of the class or as a review at the end of instruction. Students and parents can use them as an ongoing review to ensure that students have mastered and retained the content they are expected to learn.

Select an Item to View

Use your mouse to select a grade from the subject categories below. This week’s MSA Item for that category will appear at right.

Reading:

Mathematics:

Science:

Print

Student Handout with Answer Key, and Objective Information.

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Monitoring Reports

Students can keep a record of their progress on these assessment items by using the Monitoring Report, a tool that lists of of the grade level objectives assessed on MSA. The Monitoring Report contains space for entering multiple assessment results and diagnostic comments.

Monitoring Report for Mathematics Grade 8

MSA Item of the Week

This item is one of the many resources available in the Mathematics State Curriculum Toolkit.

Mathematics Grade 8

Look at the box-and-whisker plots below.

Populations of Countries in South America and Africa
(in millions of people)

plot comparing population of africa with that of south america

(source: www.aneki.com)

Which statement is accurate based on the box-and-whisker plots?

  1. The median population of the countries in Africa is less than the median population of the countries in South America.
  2. The country with the greatest population in Africa has a greater population than the country with the greatest population in South America.
  3. There are more people in Africa than in South America.
  4. The lower quartile population of countries in Africa is greater than the median population of countries in South America. (correct answer)

View answer and objective assessed

/toolkit/vsc/assessment_items/msa_math_8_027.xml