Students in their primary years are beginning to attend school and learn formally about numbers. Students entering the primary years in kindergarten expected to be able to work flexibly with quantities to 5. Many students enter this range able to verbally count with conservation of order to ten and beyond. As students progress through the primary years, they expand their understanding of quantity from 5 to 100. Students begin to utilize place value to represent and understand quantities and number relationships. At this level students can write numbers and represent quantities with mathematical notation. Students can subitize with larger quantities as well as when the images or items are non-identical. At this level, students are introduced to comparison and the concepts of equality and inequality.
| Domain | skill group | skill descriptor | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Numbers and counting | recognizes numbers | spoken | 10 | 20 | 100 |
| written | 10 | 20 | 100 | ||
| subitizing | dots | 10 | 20 | 30 | |
| 2 colour dots | 10 | 20 | |||
| with objects | 10 | 20 | 30 | ||
| copy with objects | 10 | 20 | 30 | ||
| Counting | to ____in sequence | 10 | 20 | 100 | |
| objects and images to _____ with one-to-one correspondence | 10 | 20 | 100 | ||
| counts objects with one-to-one correspondence to determine how many | 10 | 20 | 100 | ||
| forward by ____ from zero | 1 | 2 | 10 | ||
| 5 | |||||
| forward by from any number | 1 | 2 | 10 | ||
| 5 | |||||
| backward by from a given number | 1 | 2 | 10 | ||
| 5 | |||||
| groups objects by ____ for effective counting | 1 | 2 | 5 | ||
| Representing Numbers | whole numbers | with objects | 10 | 20 | 100 |
| with drawings | 10 | 20 | 100 | ||
| with numerals | 10 | 20 | 100 | ||
| Place Value | base 10 numeration – whole numbers | represents numbers with base ten blocks to | 20 | 100 | |
| uses a place value chart to represent numbers to | 20 | 100 | |||
| identifies the value of the numbers in each place to | 20 | 100 | |||
| record numbers in standard notation from a place value chart | 20 | 100 | |||
| Number Relationships | composition and decomposition | composes numbers to___ in many ways using objects | 5 | 10 | 100 |
| composes numbers to___ in many ways using pictures | 5 | 10 | 100 | ||
| compose numbers to____ using numerals and mathematical notation | 10 | 100 | |||
| uses base 10 blocks to compose numbers to ___ in many ways | 20 | 100 | |||
| decomposes numbers to___ in many ways using objects | 5 | 10 | 100 | ||
| decomposes numbers to___ in many ways using pictures | 5 | 10 | 100 | ||
| decompose numbers to____ using numerals and mathematical notation | 10 | 100 | |||
| uses base 10 blocks to decompose numbers to ___ in many ways | 20 | 100 | |||
| comparing and ordering – base 10 numeration | compares quantities to | 10 | 20 | 100 | |
| compare pairs of numbers to a maximum number of ___ using inequalities notation (greater than/ less than / equal to) | 20 | 100 | |||
| compare groups of numbers to a maximum number of ___ using inequalities notation (greater than/ less than / equal to) | 100 | ||||
| uses place value to compare numbers | 10 | 100 | |||
| uses place value to order numbers | 10 | 100 | |||
| order numbers to ___ | 20 | 100 | |||
| place numbers to ___ on a number line | 100 | ||||
| uses benchmarks to compare and order numbers | 10 | 25 | |||
| 50 |