How Primer works, in the questions parents actually ask.

Primer is a K through 12 curriculum written one student at a time. At setup you tell it what your student loves, where they get stuck, and what you want them to master. From then on every lesson is generated for that student alone, themed to their interests and shaped by what they already know, and each lesson learns from the one before it.

It covers every subject from kindergarten foundations to high school calculus, with a worksheet for every lesson, an off-screen activity in the middle of each one, and a written progress summary for you every week. See how it works on the home page.

It was built by a family of parents for their own kids, and it fits three situations. Homeschool families use it as the whole curriculum. Families whose student is in school use it as a tutor for one subject, alongside class. And students who learn differently use it because every lesson is shaped around them rather than around a classroom average.

Plans are priced per student, any grade from kindergarten through twelfth. Start with the situation you are in, or read about running Primer alongside school.

Six focus areas: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, History and Social Studies, Life Skills, and Foreign Language, from kindergarten through high school. Inside each one are skills, which are what a school would call a subject: Fractions, Geography, US History, Reading Fluency. Every skill states its own scope and grade range, and every unit on its path shows the typical grade level for that lesson.

Grade is a filter on what you browse, not a label on your student, so a ten-year-old can work in a high school skill and a sixth grader can go back to third grade fractions without anyone being told they are behind. The Unlimited plan adds custom topics on anything at all. Skills, paths, and curriculum, explained.

Either, and the app does not care which. Whatever is running at once is your student's curriculum. A curriculum of one skill is a complete curriculum in Primer, so you can add Fractions alone to shore up what class is doing, or add every subject and let it be the school year.

Many families run it alongside school or another curriculum for a single subject, then widen it later. How families use it for tutoring.

No. Primer's lessons and teachers are AI. Every student has a named Primer teacher with their own email address, listed on the student's Profile tab, and a message to that address gets a thoughtful reply within a few minutes: ask for extra worksheets, a pacing change, or an honest read on how it is going.

Support is different. A real person reads every message sent to the support page and writes back by email, usually within one business day. Emailing your student's teacher.

A chatbot gives you a lesson. Primer gives your student an education. The difference is everything around the lesson: a memory of every lesson, question, and raised hand that is kept per student and never reset; the same five-step shape every time; a worksheet and handwriting practice for each lesson; a progress system that knows what is mastered and what is shaky; a placement check that finds the right starting point; figures drawn by the app rather than guessed; and a curriculum you can see and rearrange.

A missed question comes back later in a new form. A mastered one does not get asked again. The ten things a chatbot lesson is missing.

Create an account, then add a student with the plus button on your Family Dashboard: a first name and a date of birth. Primer walks you through a ten-step intake interview about who they are and what you want. When you finish, the Curriculum tab is already filled in from the subjects and grade you entered, and each subject has a path of units ready to go.

Offer a Starting Point Check on each subject, or pick the starting unit yourself, then generate the first batch of one, three, or five lessons. Generating takes a minute or two. Every new account starts with a 14-day free trial, and your card is not charged until the trial ends. From intake to first lessons.

Yes. The free lesson page asks for a first name, an age, one thing your student loves, one topic, and your email. No account and no card. The lesson is written for your student and opens on your screen in a minute or two.

The sample is slightly abbreviated: it leaves out the Unplugged activity, the worksheet, the puzzle, the video, the in-depth practice, and the exit ticket, all of which are in every lesson once you have an account.

Five to ten minutes, in ten steps: how Primer uses AI, the basics (language, grade, accessibility needs), strengths and interests, where they are now in each subject, what gets in the way, learning supports, what frustration looks like and what helps them recover, goals including topics that must or must not be covered, whether to check lessons against academic standards, and safety permissions such as whether lessons may include external videos.

The learning supports step is entirely optional and is parent-reported context, not a diagnosis. At the end Primer writes a summary for you to review, and nothing in it is permanent: every answer is editable later from the student's Profile tab. Every step of the intake interview.

A short activity your student does once per subject to find where lessons should begin. It is 18 questions in four short parts and adapts as they answer, so it spends its questions near the edge of what they know. Most students finish in 10 to 15 minutes. There is no timer, the student never sees a score, and every question has an "I'm Not Sure Yet" option so guessing is not rewarded.

When it is done, Primer sets the starting unit just past the highest level the student showed they could handle and marks the earlier units Tested Out. If they score under 50% on either of their first two graded lessons there, the tested-out units go back into the path. It works best from grade 2 up, cannot yet run on French, Spanish, or a very short custom topic, and you can always pick the starting unit yourself instead, or run the check again. How the check works and how to read its results.

No. Intake pre-fills the Curriculum tab from the subjects and grade you entered, so there is a path for each subject before you touch anything. If you only want one thing, add that one skill and press Generate Lessons. You can add more later, or never.

The Path tab is where you shape it: reorder units, skip one, mark one mastered, or add a missing topic. Skills, paths, and curriculum.

Every lesson follows the same five steps, shown as a stepper across the top of the screen: Lesson, Unplugged, Puzzle, Practice, and Exit Ticket. The Lesson step is the teaching, with a video to watch together. Unplugged is an off-screen activity with pencil and paper. The Puzzle is an interactive activity built on the lesson's vocabulary, often a crossword. Practice is a short set of questions with hints and instant checking. The Exit Ticket is the graded check at the end, and completing it marks the lesson done.

By default a lesson opens in Cinematic view: full screen, one idea per screen, with a visual drawn for that idea and a narrator who can read it aloud. It ends with the lesson's points in five plain bullets. Cinematic lessons, one idea at a time.

About thirty minutes across the five steps, and the student can stop between steps and pick up later. The Unplugged step in the middle is five to ten minutes of that, away from the screen.

If sessions run long, set the batch size to one lesson so nothing sits unfinished staring back at them. One lesson most days does more than a long session on Friday. Building a weekly routine.

Three ways at once. The interests you gave at intake become the examples and the theme, and they rotate from lesson to lesson so a baseball fan is not in the dugout every day. What the student has already shown they know, and what they missed, decides what the lesson teaches and which earlier question comes back in a new form. And the supports on file shape how it is written: shorter steps, step-by-step hints, transition help, read-aloud.

Even the illustration style is chosen for the student's age, from picture book at six to something closer to a photograph in high school. What Primer remembers, and why it matters.

Unplugged is a short, screen-free activity built around the skill the lesson just taught, usually five to ten minutes with pencil and paper. It lists what is needed, gives numbered instructions, and ends with a Check My Work button. You do not need a printer for it.

Every lesson also comes with a printable worksheet written for one student, greeting them by name, with the answer key on the last page and kept parent-only. Print it, or fill it out on an iPad with an Apple Pencil or any compatible stylus. Both can be turned off on the student's Format tab. Getting the most from Unplugged activities and worksheets.

A Need Help? button floats on every step. The student can tap a word they do not understand, tap a part that is confusing, or type a question, and the Coach answers without calling you over. Practice questions have a Show Hint button as well, and neither hints nor help requests count against them.

You can read every exchange afterward, and the weekly report's Help Requested card shows how often they asked and about what. Higher numbers usually mean engaging instead of guessing. In-lesson help can be switched off from the student's Accommodations tab. Getting help when you are stuck.

Within what you allow, yes. The student's portal has an Add a Topic box and a Curiosity panel where they can ask Primer any question, and at intake you decide whether their topic requests go straight into the path or wait for your approval.

On the Unlimited plan, one sentence in the Learning Topics box becomes a custom topic: a full course of units in the same five-step shape, added alongside reading, writing, math, science, and social studies rather than instead of them. On Focus, custom topics are not included, but each student gets three one-off custom lessons a month on any subject. How custom topics work.

Yes, in beta. Handwriting worksheets are generated from the letters your student is actually shaky on, in a gradual-release layout: Look, Write Inside, Trace, Trace, and Your Turn, then sentence pages that move from reading to tracing to writing. On an iPad, Check My Work reads the strokes and gives a report; printed pages work too, but give no report.

Ten minutes most days is the rhythm that works. Handwriting practice in Primer.

The figures in a lesson are drawn by the app rather than generated as a picture, which is why a number line has the right ticks and a fraction model has the right parts. History lessons use real public-domain maps from a curated set. Whether lessons may include AI-generated illustrations at all is an account-level toggle in Settings.

The video in the Lesson step is an embedded YouTube video, played through the privacy-enhanced player, and the Safety and Permissions step at intake decides whether lessons may include external videos. Each one has a "How is this video?" control so you can tell Primer when one misses.

You pick skills. Primer builds a path through each one. Everything running at once is your student's curriculum. A path is a ladder of units in order, each with its typical grade level beside it, so Fractions might run 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5 and Geometry runs from kindergarten shapes up through eighth grade in forty units.

On the Path tab you can say Start Here Now or Start Here Next, mark a unit mastered, skip one, drag units into a different order, or add a missing topic. The Curriculum tab also has a Quick Update box where a plain-language note like "focus more on fractions" is turned into the right settings. A tab-by-tab tour of the student's dashboard.

If you want it to be. At intake you choose whether lessons are checked against academic standards, which framework (Common Core, NGSS, C3, or your state's), and how strictly. Primer's skills line up with the standards most schools teach from, so the ladder covers the same ground in roughly the same order as a classroom. Or leave it off and let the ladder be the standard.

Either way each unit carries objectives written in the flat, testable phrasing of a standards document, which is what you reach for when somebody asks in April what your kid covered.

Nobody has to set it by hand. The pace comes from what your student actually did: a student who understands quickly moves faster, and a student who needs more time gets more time, because the next lesson is built from the last exit ticket rather than from a calendar.

The controls you do have are the batch size (one, three, or five lessons at a time), whether new batches generate automatically once the current one is done, and the delivery mode. A smaller, more frequent batch is the easiest to sustain. Building a weekly routine.

The exit ticket is the measurement moment. Primer does not grade practice, hints, how many questions the student asked, or how long a lesson took. Each exit ticket updates a running mastery number that leans on recent results, and a skill is called mastered only when that number is roughly 85% or better, confidence is roughly 75% or better, and at least three exit tickets agree.

Until then, a missed question comes back later in a new form, and a mastered one does not get asked again. How mastery and confidence are calculated.

Your Family Dashboard shows a card per student with what is next, their focus, the last 14 days of activity, and how much of their monthly credit allowance they have used. Each student's Progress tab has three views. Reports is the narrative: This Week's Story, rewritten at least daily in plain English, with highlights, next steps, mastery by skill and by subject, a 12-week activity heatmap, recurring misconceptions, and the help they requested. Classwork lists every lesson with its score. Skills shows mastery, confidence, and exit ticket history for each skill.

A written summary also lands in your inbox every week, and you can be emailed when a batch finishes generating or when a student completes their work. Your Family Dashboard.

Nothing expires and nothing resets. Lessons stay queued exactly where they were, and your student's record of what is mastered stays mastered. The useful move is to pick one short lesson and get back into rhythm rather than catching up all at once. The one thing with a clock is a Starting Point Check that was started and not finished, which closes after seven days.

If missed weeks keep happening, that is a signal about the pace, and the batch size and delivery mode are there to change it. You can also pause a student from the dashboard without losing any of their data.

No. By default a student's lessons live inside your account, opened from the Family Dashboard, and a Student View button hands the device over to them with a lock PIN that keeps them from wandering out of their view.

If you would rather they sign in themselves, invite them by email from Settings, Students. They get a simplified portal with their lessons, their progress, an avatar, a choice of teacher avatar (Professor Hoot the owl is one), and an Add a Topic box whose suggestions come to you for review. Student accounts always hang off a parent account. Inviting a student to their own portal.

Any modern browser, and the Primer app from the Apple App Store on iPad and iPhone. A student picks up where they left off whichever one they open: the laptop in the morning, the iPad in the afternoon.

Worksheets print to paper or fill out on an iPad with an Apple Pencil or any compatible stylus, and the iPad is where handwriting practice gets its stroke report.

Yes. In Self-Paced mode the student reads, practices, and takes the exit ticket on their own, with the Need Help? coach on every step and read-aloud if they want it. The lesson always runs the same five steps in the same order, so knowing what comes next is half of getting through it.

The other two delivery modes are for the days or the student that needs more of you: Parent-Led, where you teach from a printable plan and the student takes the quiz, and Hybrid, where they read on their own and you review the practice together. Switch on the Format tab. Delivery modes and batch sizes.

Student chat, both the Need Help? coach and the Curiosity panel, runs behind safety guardrails, and parents are notified of safety events. You control AI chat access, whether lessons may include external videos, and how much say the student gets over their own curriculum, all from intake and the Accommodations tab. In-lesson help can be switched off entirely.

Every exchange is readable from your side afterward. The privacy policy covers what is stored and for how long.

The exit ticket catches it. Practice is ungraded and forgiving, but the exit ticket is unlocked only once every practice question has been answered, and a weak one means the skill is not called mastered and the missed material comes back in the next lesson in a new form. Nothing moves forward on clicks alone.

The Starting Point Check has the same rule: an answer given in under about three seconds is not counted, unless the student has a pacing need on file. More on reluctant learners.

Two plans, chosen per student. Focus is $20 per student, per month, and covers one core subject: Math, Reading and Writing, Science, or History, with 500 credits a month, three one-off custom lessons a month, and the option to change the subject once every 7 days. Unlimited is $40 per student, per month, and covers every subject K through 12, plus supportive therapy-style lessons, foreign languages, and custom topics, with 1,000 credits a month.

Paying yearly saves 10%: $216 a year for Focus, $432 for Unlimited. Both plans include a worksheet for every lesson, adaptive lessons, puzzles and practice, off-screen activities, read-aloud and dyslexia-friendly mode, the weekly parent summary, and no contract. Why there are two plans.

Each plan includes a monthly allowance that lesson generation draws from: 500 credits a month on Focus, 1,000 on Unlimited. Your Family Dashboard shows how much of a student's allowance has been used this month, next to a Pause control, so you can see it coming rather than hit it. Your Family Dashboard.

Yes. Primer is billed per active student, and plans are chosen per student, so one family can mix them: one student on Focus, another on Unlimited. Adding or removing a student changes the number of paid seats and adjusts your next invoice. You pay only for the students you have.

Disabling a student pauses their lessons without deleting any of their data, and each student keeps their own teacher, their own memory, and their own progress record. Account and family settings.

Moving up to Unlimited happens right away, at any time. Moving down to Focus takes effect at the end of the current billing period, so you keep what you paid for; during the free trial it happens immediately. A Focus student's subject, say from Math to Reading and Writing, can change once every 7 days.

All of it is in Settings, Billing. The details of the Focus plan.

Every new account starts with 14 days free. Your saved payment method is not charged during the trial, and paid billing begins when the 14 days end unless you cancel before then. Pick a plan for each student when you sign up; during the trial, moving between plans happens immediately.

Want to see a lesson before even that? The first one is free, with no account and no card.

From Settings, Billing, at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and access continues until then. There is no contract and nothing to return. The terms have the full billing section.

No. The learning supports step at intake is optional and asks about diagnosed or suspected differences (dyslexia, ADHD, autism, anxiety, and so on) and what has helped before. It is parent-reported context for personalization, not a diagnosis, and nothing in the app is a clinical assessment or a clinical intervention. Accommodations adjust how lessons are written and formatted, and they sit on the student's Accommodations tab where you can change them any time.

The intake interview.

Inside every lesson: read-aloud with a narrator, a dyslexia-friendly font, four text sizes, color overlays, sound-out word chips, and a choice between one idea per screen or a single scroll. Around the lesson: an off-screen break in the middle of each one, step-by-step hints, transition help, interest-based examples, and a Need Help? coach so you are not the one nagging. The Starting Point Check has no timer and no visible score, and its fast-answer rule is switched off for a student with a pacing need on file.

Read-aloud support gives a real boost to reading comprehension, and the benefit is largest for students who struggle most. Personalizing the lesson player, and the research behind it.

Yes, because grade is a filter on what you browse, not a label on your student. A Starting Point Check places them where their understanding is actually solid, whether that is two grades back or in a high school skill at ten, and the path moves from there by mastery rather than by age. The result is a starting unit, not a report card, and the student is never told they are behind.

Primer runs alongside school or another curriculum when you only want to close one gap. Catching up and gifted and advanced students.

Primer is set up and managed by a parent or guardian, who accepts the AI and data disclosure during setup. About the child it stores a first name, grade and birthdate, interests, learning preferences and any supports you choose to share, lesson responses and results, messages in Curiosity and in-lesson help, and activity timestamps. That is what lets the next lesson learn from the last one.

Primer does not sell child data, use it for advertising or profiling, or use it to train third-party AI models. Lessons are generated by AI providers acting on Primer's behalf, billing is handled by Stripe, and the app itself carries no third-party advertising trackers. The full privacy policy.

Yes, from Settings, Privacy and Security. Export Data gives you a child's full record as a JSON file, and you can delete a child's data at any time from the same screen. Deleting a child removes their records and generated images; a full account deletion is completed within 30 days. Diagnostic AI logs are purged after 30 days and generated lesson illustrations after 90.

Privacy requests go to support@primer.institute.

For anything about a student's lessons (pacing, a topic that is too hard, more worksheets), email their teacher at the address on the student's Profile tab; replies come within a few minutes. For billing, account access, or anything technical, use the chat bubble in the app or the support page, and a real person writes back by email, usually within one business day.

Ideas and feedback go to the speech-bubble icon in the app, or to hello@primer.institute. Every message gets read and every one gets an answer. Getting help when you are stuck.

Yes. Primer's design rests on six findings that have been replicated for decades, explained in plain language on the research page and grounded in 19 peer-reviewed studies: interest-based learning, spacing and retrieval practice, one-to-one tutoring, mastery learning, pairing words with visuals, and built-in supports like read-aloud. The pattern across all of them is that the biggest gains go to the kids who struggle most.

We have not yet run a formal study on Primer itself. That is on the roadmap, and we will never promise a number we cannot back up.