Math Kangaroo Grade Levels: 3–4 Through 11–12
Math Kangaroo is five grade bands, not one ladder you climb for fun. The bands are 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, and 11–12. You sit the band that matches the paper you will sit — or, on My Path, the band of the sitting you are about to start. You never mix them. The platform will not build a multi-grade pool. If you pick several grades, it rolls one band. That is the rule for all maths practice here, and it is load-bearing for Kangaroo because of how difficulty actually works on these papers.
This article is the grade-band page. The product card is Math Kangaroo practice. The reason mixing is refused in general is why grade bands matter in practice. What follows is the Kangaroo-specific version: complexity is task position, not age; pictures carry the question; Mixed Problems is a real topic; and sitting language is a control because the wider maths bank has Polish and English items.
The five bands
| Band | Who it is for | Whole-paper length (typical) |
|---|---|---|
| 3–4 | Grades 3 and 4 | 24 tasks |
| 5–6 | Grades 5 and 6 | 30 tasks in 2020–2021; 24 tasks in 2022–2025 |
| 7–8 | Grades 7 and 8 | 30 tasks |
| 9–10 | Grades 9 and 10 | 30 tasks |
| 11–12 | Grades 11 and 12 | 30 tasks |
"Who it is for" means the contest paper aimed at those school years, not a My Path marketing segment. If the child will enter the 5–6 paper, practise 5–6. If you are an adult using the bank because you like the puzzles, pick a band and stay there for the sitting; do not blend 3–4 openers with 11–12 closers and call the result a diagnostic.
Level 5–6 is the band whose length changed. Scoring details for that cut are in Math Kangaroo scoring. Grade choice still comes first. You cannot compensate for sitting the wrong band by knowing the thirds.
Why mixing is refused
On a Kangaroo paper, "hard" is mostly where the task sits in that booklet, not a universal age rating. The first third of a 3–4 paper is easy-for-3–4. The last third of a 3–4 paper is hard-for-3–4. The first third of an 11–12 paper is easy-for-11–12, which is not the same as hard-for-3–4, and not a number you can average.
If the platform mixed bands, a session labelled "medium" would be a pile of incomparable items. A parent would see a score and think it said something about the child. It would say something about a random draw across papers that were never meant to share a scale. The Education runner already refuses multi-grade pools (grade_required). Kangaroo does not get an exception.
Picking several grades and having the UI roll one band is the same rule with a friendlier failure mode. You still sit one band. You do not sit a blend.
This is also why "try the next band up to challenge them" is usually a bad diagnostic. You are not adding challenge in the Kangaroo sense. You are switching to a different paper's first-third, which may feel easier or harder for reasons that have nothing to do with the child's 5–6 last-third, which is the actual bottleneck if they are sitting 5–6.
Complexity is task position, not age
Inside a band, later tasks are the hard ones. That is what the 3/4/5 split encodes, and it is what "complexity" is tracking when you look at mastery inside a grade. Across bands, those labels are not comparable. An item that is complexity-whatever on 3–4 is not the same kind of object as an item with the same label on 11–12.
Do not build a personal theory that maps "grade 8, task 22" onto "grade 11, task 8." The papers were written as papers. Position on this paper is the difficulty system. Age is how you chose the paper, not a second difficulty axis you can slide independently.
That is the opposite of how a lot of worksheet sites work, where "grade 6" means "we used bigger numbers." Kangaroo 7–8 is not Kangaroo 5–6 with extra digits. It is a different set of puzzles, with a different last third, often with a different paper length.
When you read a mastery bar, read it inside the band you sat. A topic that is green on 3–4 is not evidence about 9–10. If you change bands, you are starting a different picture, not continuing the same one.
Pictures and diagrams are part of the grade, not extra
Many Kangaroo items are a figure plus a short stem. The figure is not a hint. It is the object you have to count, fold, colour, or chase around a symmetry. Some items cannot be classified without the diagram, which is why they land in Mixed Problems rather than in a tidy strand like "fractions."
Younger bands use pictures heavily because that is how you ask a hard question without a wall of algebra. Older bands still use them; the pictures just assume more. Skipping the image, or treating it as optional decoration, is skipping the item at every grade.
My Path renders maths as maths in the session. When the item is a crop of a printed figure, that crop is what you should be looking at. If a task feels impossible as text, look at the picture again before you skip. The skip button is there for when you genuinely do not know, not for when you have not looked.
This is one of the practical differences between Kangaroo practice and a purely symbolic drill. General Math includes the wider bank — algebra, geometry, statistics, number, fractions, and Mixed Problems — and can serve Kangaroo items when the grade and topic match. If the current problem is "the diagram is the question," stay on the Kangaroo card and filter Mixed Problems. If the current problem is "I do not have the technique the puzzle assumed," use General Math in the same band.
Mixed Problems is a topic, not a junk drawer
The topic filter is a closed vocabulary. Unclassified Kangaroo puzzles display as Mixed Problems, not as "Unclassified." That wording is the product being honest: these are items that resist a keyword. Contest papers are full of them. Filtering them out because the name sounds leftover will hide the part of the paper that is most unlike a textbook chapter.
You can still filter other named topics when you want technique drill. Use Mixed Problems when you want the contest texture: odd setups, pictures, counting arguments, "which of these must be true." A prep plan that never opens Mixed Problems is a prep plan for a different test.
Mastery at 80% on a named strand is a topic-master badge territory. Treat Mixed Problems with the same seriousness. It will probably move slower. That is information about the paper, not a defect in the student.
Polish and English items, and sitting language
The wider maths bank includes Polish and English items. Maths is one subject with two locales: the Polish and English versions of a question are translations of one item, not two unrelated banks. Languages on My Path are the opposite — a German item is not a translation of an English one — which is why language tests are separate subjects. Maths is not.
Sitting language is a control on the session. It chooses which locale of the item you are served, it does not mix Polish stems into an English sitting by accident, and it does not turn a grade 7–8 English session into a different grade. Pick the language you will actually read on the day you care about. If the child will sit a paper in English, sit in English. If they will sit in Polish, sit in Polish. Do not use the other locale as "extra difficulty." Translation is not a difficulty slider; it is a different script for the same puzzle, and some items are picture-first anyway.
The control is there because serving the wrong locale is a real failure mode in a bilingual bank. Use it on purpose. Do not ignore it and then wonder why a stem is in a language the student does not read.
How to choose a band on My Path
Match the contest paper if a date exists. If there is no date and you are practising for interest, match the student's current school year. If they sit on the boundary (just finished grade 6, 5–6 vs 7–8), use the paper they are allowed to enter, not the one that sounds more impressive.
Then leave the band alone for long enough to learn something. A single 20 in 5–6, a single 20 in 7–8, and a single 20 in 9–10 is three noisy samples, not a path. The runner's mastery, retry-wrong, and topic filter only help if the grade is stable.
Size (10 / 20 / 60), timer, feedback, and navigation are independent of band. They are sitting controls, documented on the practice test page. Changing the timer does not change the grade. Changing the grade does not make a 10-item session into a paper.
What parents usually get wrong
They sit the child up a band "to see." The score is poor. Everyone concludes the child is behind. The conclusion does not follow. They were on the wrong paper.
They mix Kangaroo with untimed textbook work and then compare percentages. Kangaroo scores are points on a 3/4/5 paper, sometimes with a starting score if the sitting was a whole paper. A textbook percentage is something else. Read the scoring article before quoting either number.
They treat pictures as optional, especially in 3–4 and 5–6. The pictures are the work.
They switch sitting language mid-prep without noticing. Then a "drop in score" is a language mismatch.
They want one sitting that covers "all maths." That sitting does not exist on this hub. One grade per sitting is the design. Education on My Path is exam preparation with that constraint on purpose.
What students usually get wrong
They live in the first third because it feels like success, and they never meet the 5-point tasks that will actually move a contest total.
They skip Mixed Problems in the filter because the name sounds messy.
They read a mastery bar from last month's 3–4 work as if it applied after a birthday moved them to 5–6.
They treat a 60-item session as "I sat two papers." They sat 60 practice items in one band. official_score appears when a sitting is a whole paper of one level, not when the session is long.
Length is not a second grade axis
A 24-task paper and a 30-task paper are different booklets. They are not "shorter grade" and "longer grade." Level 3–4 is 24 because that is how that paper is written. Level 7–8 is 30 for the same reason. Level 5–6 switched from 30 to 24 between 2021 and 2022, which is a year cut, not a promotion. You still pick 5–6 as the band; you do not pick "the 24 one" as if it were a different grade.
On My Path you also pick a session size of 10, 20, or 60. That size is how many items the runner will serve. It is independent of the paper's printed length. A 20 in 11–12 is not a 20 in 3–4 with the volume turned up, and a 60 is not a substitute for sitting the right band. Keep grade and size in separate hands: grade names the paper family, size names the sitting you have time for today.
Stay in band, then practise
Open Education, pick Math Kangaroo, pick the one band that matches the paper, and start. Student or Monthly is required; plans are on Premium. If you want a sequence of sittings rather than a single diagnostic, use how to prepare. The grade choice is the part to get right first. Everything else in the runner assumes you already did.