Skills are not birthdays

Use this page to notice what a child can do independently, with a prompt, or not yet. Age bands are broad reference points, not promotion rules.

Student

Observed by

Period observed

Skill	Independent	With help	Not introduced	Work sample / date	Next small step

Why three columns instead of a grade. “With help” is the most useful box on the page. A skill that appears there is not a gap — it is a skill in progress, and it usually needs practice rather than reteaching. A skill in “not introduced” needs a lesson. Those two need completely different weeks, and a single mark out of ten hides the difference.

Using it

Three rules that keep this honest

Observe on an ordinary day. Not on a Monday after a holiday, and not on the day you are worried.
Write the sample, not the impression. “Two-digit subtraction with regrouping, 12 Oct worksheet, 7 of 10 with two place-value errors” is evidence. “Struggles with subtraction” is a mood.
One next small step per row. If you cannot name the next step in one line, the skill is described too broadly to teach.

Where you keep seeing the same “next small step” three weeks running — that is the one to look at properly.

This is observation, not assessment. A short list of ticks cannot capture every reason a child did or did not manage something on a given day. Use work samples and your own knowledge of the child alongside it — and if you want a structured starting point for placement, the adaptive placement test was built for that job.