Grade 6–8 age 11–14

What your child practises here in Grade 6–8, with a real lesson and question from each subject.

Grade 6–⁠8 math here is first algebra: expressions and equations. Not here yet: multiplying and dividing fractions and decimals, area of shapes, angles, among others. When your child has learned these, the level moves up. Use it alongside what the school sends home. See the detail

  • A short lesson first
  • Worksheets of 20 to 25 questions, in rounds of 5 or 6
  • Learned means 3 in 4 right, on two different days

Math

Algebra begins: letters for numbers, simplifying, one- and two-step equations.

From the lesson · Two-step equations

Solve: 4x + 6 = 26

xxxx626
  1. The 6 was added last, so it comes off first: 26 − 6 = 20, giving 4x = 20.
  2. Now only the multiplying is left to undo.
  3. Divide both sides by 4: 20 ÷ 4.

Answer: x = 5

Then questions like this one

Solve: 3x + 5 = 20

Ax = 5Bx = 15Cx = 3Dx = 25/3

What Grade 6–8 math practises here

  • Variables & expressionswriting an expression for a described situation using a variable
  • Evaluating expressionssubstituting a value for a variable and computing the result
  • Simplifying expressionscollecting like terms and using the distributive property
  • One-step equationssolving one-step linear equations by inverse operations
  • Two-step equationssolving two-step linear equations
  • Turning words into equationstranslating a word problem into an equation and solving it

Not here yet

Multiplying and dividing fractions and decimals, area of shapes, angles, graphs and averages, money and interest.

Most schools teach these this year too. Until they are here, use what your school sends home for them.

English

Grammar mechanics, inference, and an author's purpose.

From the lesson · Inference

'Nadia pulled on her boots and picked up the lead from beside the door.' What can you infer?

  1. List the clues: the boots, the lead, and the fact that both were picked up together.
  2. Test an answer against all of them. 'She was tidying up' explains the lead and not the boots.
  3. A lead is for an animal and boots are for outside, so the two together point one way.

Answer: She was taking the dog out

Then questions like this one

'Maya grabbed her umbrella and boots before leaving.' You can infer that:

AIt is snowingBIt is likely rainingCShe is going to bedDShe lost her keys

What Grade 6–8 English practises here

  • Grammar mechanicscommas, semicolons and common grammatical errors
  • Modifiersmisplaced and dangling modifiers, and precise placement
  • Inferenceconclusions the passage implies but does not state
  • Author's purposewhy the author wrote the passage and how tone reveals it
  • Summarisingchoosing the best summary of a passage

AI literacy

Kinds of machine learning, two kinds of mistakes, fair decisions.

From the lesson · Two kinds of mistakes

A camera app says 'no bird here' when a bird is hidden in the leaves. Which kind of mistake is it?

  1. What did it say? 'No' — no bird.
  2. What was true? 'Yes' — there was a bird.
  3. Saying no when the truth is yes is a false negative.

Answer: a false negative

Then questions like this one

In a spam filter, 'positive' means 'flagged as spam'. The filter puts a real email from your teacher into spam. What kind of mistake is this?

Aa false negativeBa correct resultCa false positiveDa true negative

What Grade 6–8 AI literacy practises here

  • Labels vs finding groupsthe difference between learning from labelled examples (supervised learning) and finding groups in data that has no labels (clustering)
  • Learning by rewardhow an AI can learn by trial and error with rewards and penalties (reinforcement learning), as a game character or a robot does, how a badly chosen reward goes wrong, and how an app or chatbot rewarded for keeping you on it can learn to flatter you, agree with you or show you more of the same
  • Written rules vs learned rulesthe difference between a program whose rules people write and a model that learns its rules from data, and which suits which job
  • Two kinds of mistakesfalse positives and false negatives (a spam filter blocking a real email, or letting spam through), and that which mistake is worse depends on who gets hurt: a missed fire is worse than a false alarm, but a cheating detector wrongly accusing an honest student is a false alarm that does real harm
  • Fair decisionsjudging whether an AI decision treats people fairly, who could be harmed, and why a person should be able to question and review it

Not sure Grade 6–8 is right?

Each grade here practises the main topic most schools teach that year. It is not everything your child's school covers. Grades are a guide, not any province's program, so a short warm-up checks your child's level first, in each subject: a child can be in one grade for English and another for math. The level moves up as they learn.

Five questions, right now

Grade 6–8 math, English or AI literacy. No sign-up, nothing saved.