Choosing a grade

Kindergarten to Grade 5 explained: how a birth year suggests a level, why you can always pick another one, and how each level follows the syllabus.

The levels on the site

Mathematics is split into levels that follow the school years. The first level, Kindergarten, is for ages 4 to 6 and covers the pre-school and kindergarten years together: playing with numbers up to 10, shapes, sizes and patterns. Then come Grades 1 to 5, each covering roughly one school year, up to ages 10 to 11. A Grade 6 level also exists as an optional bridge towards middle school. It does not hold anyone back.

Each level has its own short description of what it covers. Grade 1, for example, is about counting and adding within 20 and reading the clock, while Grade 3 brings multiplication, division and first fractions.

How the birth year is used

When you add a child, you can enter a year of birth. The site uses it to suggest a grade. The school year is taken to begin on 1 September, and a child is placed in Grade 1 in the school year in which they turn six. Younger children are placed at the pre-school level, which appears as Kindergarten, and older ones stop at Grade 5.

The year must be a real year, not in the future and not more than 20 years back. Because the grade is calculated from the year, it moves up on its own as the child grows older. You never have to update it by hand.

The birth year is optional. Without it, the profile shows "No grade set". Everything stays open; you simply choose the level yourself. You can add the year at any time in the Parent Area, where the progress overview also uses it to show what is expected at that age.

You can always choose a different level

The suggested grade is only a starting point. Children do not all progress at the same speed, and a level that is too easy or too hard is a poor fit whatever the calendar says. Use the previous and next grade buttons on the syllabus page to move around. During an activity you can also ask for an easier or a harder level of the same topic when one exists.

Matching the syllabus

Every skill belongs to a topic and a level, so the Syllabus tab reads like a checklist for the school year. It shows how many skills are passed out of the total, and you can filter to see only those passed or not yet passed. For a child who is ahead, look at the next level. For a child who is finding things hard, go back one level and rebuild confidence there, which is not a step backwards.