How a daily session is built

Every day Masterly builds a fresh session from where your student is up to. It's made from four kinds of work:

You choose the most a session should take in Settings. It's a maximum, not a target: a day with less to do is a shorter day. Reviews and new lessons are planned first, then practice, then homework fills the time that's left. Reviews take up to about a quarter of the session (always room for two if that many are due, never more than six), the ones overdue longest first. There's always room for at least a few homework questions, because homework is the only thing with a due date.

When there's more practice than fits, we keep the skills most at risk of slipping and bring the rest back the next day. A skill that keeps missing out moves to the front of the line after a week.

If a lot of homework doesn't fit, the extra is offered once your student finishes: "Want to get ahead?" The same goes for spare time: when the planned session is short, more lessons from the plan (past your new-skills-per-day setting) are offered there too, as long as they fit inside the session length. It's genuinely optional. Their streak and the day's progress count the planned session only, so stopping there is always a finished day.

Homework normally mixes in - a few questions at a time between lessons and practice - so a big worksheet never buries everything else. Mark a piece Do this first and it leads the session instead, ahead of the warm-up. Use it for anything due tomorrow.

Each day gets its own session, but unfinished work isn't lost: anything they didn't answer - including anything they skipped - comes back in a later session.

Longer writing is saved as they type. If they stop part-way through a story, the next session picks it up at the same stage, with their plan and draft intact - on any device.

Settings also controls how many new skills your student can start in a day. Skills you add to the plan are taught before ones we'd suggest ourselves, and earlier-year skills come before later ones.

Only starting a skill counts as a new skill. The next part of a skill they've already started is a lesson too, but it fits into the session time with the practice rather than using up a new-skill place.

Curriculum skills are often several ideas at once - "create, expand, factorise, rearrange and simplify expressions" is really five things. So every skill is split into a few parts (one to six), and each lesson teaches just one: Like terms, then Collecting like terms, then Expanding brackets, and so on. A small skill is one part.

A new part is taught once the parts it builds on have been answered right. In between, practice comes from the parts already taught, the one they're shakiest on first. The lesson and practice screens show which part it is ("Part 2 of 5"), and the Skills page shows how far they are with each part.

A skill is mastered only when every part has been answered right on its own, and the usual mastery rules hold (several right answers across different days). Reviews later on mix the parts together.

Every lesson opens with the words that part uses, in a box called Words you'll need: each with a plain meaning and a tiny example, the same way we'd explain what an antonym is. Questions still use the words teachers use in class (like terms, simplify, simile), because that's what your student will hear at school, but the first time a word appears on a page it has a short meaning beside it in brackets.

Those words are underlined with dots wherever they appear. Tapping one shows what it means and an example, on any lesson, practice or review page.

Each screen holds one idea. Lesson pages and questions have a word limit for the student's year, and a long explanation is split over more pages. Worked examples show one step at a time: each step replaces the last, with Back and Next step buttons, and "So far" shows where the working has got to. The "How to do it" steps and the word list start closed and open with a tap - unless the lesson is giving the most support, when they start open.

Your student can skip anything. When they do, they can tap a reason - or just skip. A skip never counts as a wrong answer, and the reason only changes how it comes back:

Add your student's interests in Settings and lessons and practice questions are set in them where it fits: a maths word problem about a football match, a sentence about a pet. We match your words to a set of general themes: gaming, anime and manga, animals and pets, sport, music and dance, space, cooking and food, cars and vehicles, art and drawing, nature and outdoors, online video, dinosaurs, building and making, fashion, books and stories, and science and gadgets. Under the interests box, Settings shows which ones we found.

Each lesson uses one theme, and it changes from day to day. Only the general theme is used, never your exact words, and never the names of games, shows or brands. The skill, the steps and how hard it is stay the same, and a theme that doesn't suit a skill (a formal letter, say) is left out.

Lessons and practice questions are made as your student reaches them. Very rarely one can't be made in time. When that happens the session doesn't stop or show an error: it swaps in something that's already ready - practice on a skill they're working on, a review that's due, or a lesson that's already made - and keeps going. If nothing else is ready, it simply moves on.

This is never counted as a skip, and it never changes their progress. History shows the swap plainly ("Couldn't be prepared - replaced with ..."), and the lesson comes back on another day once it's ready. We hear about it too, and fix the lesson behind the scenes.

The streak counts practice days - days with at least one finished activity. It doesn't need every day: it keeps going as long as there's practice at least once every 3 days. A Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine holds a streak, weekends included. Three rest days in a row start a new one.