EQAO study guide
EQAO · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
EQAO refers to the provincial assessment program overseen by the Education Quality and Accountability Office in Ontario, Canada. EQAO's provincial tests assess students' literacy (reading and writing) and numeracy (mathematics) knowledge and skills at key points in students' kindergarten to Grade 12 education. The suite includes the Grade 3 Primary Division and Grade 6 Junior Division Assessments of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, the Grade 9 Assessment of Mathematics, the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) and the Mathematics Proficiency Test (MPT), plus national and international assessments that EQAO coordinates on behalf of the provincial government and that external organizations develop and administer. The assessments are written by students in Ontario schools at the relevant grade or, for the OSSLT and MPT, by candidates who need to meet the associated requirement. Topics on this exam: Literacy (Reading and Writing) and Numeracy (Mathematics). The EQAO study guide has 2 sections and about 647 words.
01Literacy: Reading and Writing
Literacy tasks ask you to do two related things: understand a text and respond to it clearly . For reading, you need to find stated information, infer what is implied, identify main idea versus supporting detail, recognize a writer's purpose and tone, and explain how word choice or structure shapes meaning. For writing, you need control of sentence structure, grammar and punctuation (especially commas, apostrophes, and agreement), paragraph organization, and the ability to support a claim with relevant evidence. Answering from memory instead of the text.
347 words, about 2 min02Numeracy: Mathematics
Numeracy items span number sense (place value, fractions, decimals, percentages, integers), proportional reasoning (ratios, rates, unit rates), algebra (patterns, expressions, solving simple equations), geometry and measurement (area, perimeter, volume, angle relationships), and data (reading graphs, mean/median/mode, probability). Most questions are multi-step: you must choose an operation, carry it out accurately, and interpret the result in context. Minutes versus hours, centimetres versus metres, or a rate given per hour but asked per minute. Percent change confusion.
300 words, about 2 min