Kindergarten to grade 12 · Canada
Canada has no national curriculum — each province and territory writes its own — but the arc of a school career is broadly the same across the country. This is what changes each year in math and in reading, the four bands those years fall into, and the two points where children most often come unstuck.
Provinces divide school differently and none of the names are national — Ontario uses Primary, Junior, Intermediate and Senior; Quebec uses two-year cycles; British Columbia splits at the end of grade 7. The bands below are described rather than borrowed from any one of them.
Early elementary · Kindergarten to Grade 34 covered
The defining change of these four years happens at the end of them. Until grade 3 a child is learning to read; from grade 3 onward they are reading in order to learn everything else, and a comprehension gap that was invisible starts costing marks in science and social studies too. In math the arc runs from counting to numbers to 1,000, and from adding to the beginnings of multiplicative thinking.
Upper elementary · Grade 4 to Grade 62 covered
Fractions and proportional reasoning arrive here, and they are the strongest single predictor of how far a child gets in secondary math. Reading moves to longer texts and to non-fiction that has to be interrogated rather than absorbed. This is also where a gap left over from early elementary stops being catchable by ordinary classroom teaching.
Middle years · Grade 7 to Grade 8
Algebra means a letter now stands for a quantity, which is the first genuinely abstract move most children are asked to make. It happens at the same time as a structural change — several teachers instead of one, and a parent who no longer hears about the day. Both make a struggling student much easier to miss.
Secondary · Grade 9 to Grade 12
Courses become credits, streams and pathways narrow what is available later, and in several provinces a literacy requirement or a provincial exam sits across the path. The stakes of a weak foundation change here: it stops being a learning problem and becomes a scheduling one.
One line per year rather than a list of topics, because the topics are on every other site and the shift is the part a parent is trying to find. Grades marked covered have practice pages here; the rest are described on this page and nowhere else, which is deliberate — see below.
| Grade | Age | In math | In reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindergartencoveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 4–6 | Counting, recognising numbers, and comparing more and fewer | Letters and their sounds; being read to, and joining in |
| Grade 1coveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 6–7 | Numbers to 20 and the beginnings of adding and taking away | Decoding — turning printed letters into words that mean something |
| Grade 2coveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 7–8 | Numbers to 100, regrouping, and facts to 20 becoming automatic | Reading independently, and answering what actually happened |
| Grade 3coveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 8–9 | Multiplication and division as ideas; numbers to 1,000; two-step problems | Inference — explaining why, when the text never says so |
| Grade 4coveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 9–10 | Multiplication facts becoming fluent; fractions as quantities | Reading to learn: non-fiction as a source rather than an exercise |
| Grade 5coveredmathreadingcritical thinkingscience | 10–11 | Operations with fractions and decimals, and multi-step problems | Comparing two texts, and separating a claim from the evidence for it |
| Grade 6 | 11–12 | Ratio, rate and percent — proportional reasoning in the open | Reading for argument: noticing what a text is trying to do to you |
| Grade 7 | 12–13 | Integers, and a letter standing for an unknown quantity | Sustained analysis — a paragraph that supports one claim properly |
| Grade 8 | 13–14 | Linear relations, and solving rather than only simplifying | Voice and purpose; writing that anticipates a reader who disagrees |
| Grade 9 | 14–15 | Functions and graphing; courses start counting toward a diploma | Literary and informational analysis on a marked, credited timetable |
| Grade 10 | 15–16 | Quadratics and trigonometry; the year most pathways diverge | In several provinces, a literacy requirement sits on this year |
| Grade 11 | 16–17 | Functions in depth; course choice starts closing post-secondary doors | Research and referencing, at something close to first-year length |
| Grade 12 | 17–18 | Calculus, advanced functions or data — whichever the pathway required | Independent extended writing, and the marks that carry to admissions |
Daily Academy is being built toward K–12. It covers kindergarten to grade 5 today, and a grade gets its own practice pages only once the activity library actually holds enough content to serve a child in it — the check is made against the library, not against a plan.
The alternative would have been a page for every grade and subject, most of them promising practice that does not exist yet. That is a familiar move and we are not making it: it wastes the time of the parent who lands on one, and it is the fastest way for a site to be classified as thin. When grade 4 content exists, its pages will appear. Until then this page is where grade 4 is described.
The grade descriptions above are a broad account of Canadian schooling, not a provincial curriculum document. Your ministry publishes the version that counts — see the province pages for who that is where you live.
No. Education is a provincial responsibility and each province and territory writes its own curriculum. The grade-by-grade arc is broadly similar across the country — what differs is how each curriculum is organised and worded, when a few topics are introduced, and which grades are assessed province-wide.
Today it covers kindergarten to grade 5 in math, reading, logic and science. The program is being built toward K–12, and a grade gets its own practice pages only once the library actually holds enough content to serve it — which is why the other grades appear on this page rather than as pages of their own.
There is no announced date. Grades are added when the content for them exists rather than on a schedule, because a grade page with a thin library behind it serves a parent worse than no page at all. The daily mission is free, so the cheapest way to know is to start with a covered grade and see.
Children usually start kindergarten at 4 or 5 and grade 1 at 6, then add a year per grade: grade 3 at 8, grade 6 at 11, grade 9 at 14, and grade 12 at 17 or 18. Cut-off dates differ by province and a child can be a full year either side of these without anything being unusual.
Two are usually named. The first is the end of grade 3, where a child stops learning to read and starts reading to learn — a comprehension gap that was invisible until then begins costing marks in every other subject. The second is grade 7, where a letter starts standing for a quantity in math at the same time as one teacher becomes several.
A five-minute intake places your child on a continuous scale rather than in a year group, and the daily mission is free. If your child is outside the covered grades, this is not the right tool for them yet.