Khan Academy Best Practices for Supporting English Language Learners

Hey everyone, this is Jeremy Schieffling at Khan Academy. I want to wish you a happy Friday after week number five. Can you believe it? Since this all started, I know like the way of doing things in the past feels like the distant past all of a sudden. But we really appreciate everything that educators are doing across the country to serve their students in this time of need.

We especially appreciate your fellow educator Jessica, who's calling in from Brownsville, Texas, where she's an English and ESL teacher and is using Khan Academy for the last two years to serve her students in a really effective way. So Jessica, thank you so much for being here today.

Jessica: Thank you for inviting me! I appreciate it. And just to give folks a sense of how they can interact with you, we're going to go over some basic things about Jessica's background as an educator, how she recommends that you start using Khan Academy if you're just getting started this week. But then if you have specific questions, you can ask those via the GoToWebinar questions feature—just type them in and we'll take those as we go into the session. Jessica can really walk you through whatever's on your mind.

Jeremy: So that being said, Jessica, why don’t you tell folks a little bit about your own educational adventure and how you got to where you are as a teacher today?

Jessica: Well, I'm an English ESL English 1 teacher in Brownsville, Texas. Our demographics are pretty unique; we have very high low socioeconomic students, and I also have a large percentage of ESL students. We have 2,500 students in my school; we have six high schools and out of our 2,500 students, about 350 of them are ELLs, and we have about a hundred students who are newcomers, which means that they're at the beginning level as far as we can tell from English— as far as English language learning, so they're beginners.

I am certified as an ESL English 1 teacher, 4 through 8 and 8 through 12 in Texas. I also hold technology application certifications for 8 to 12 grades. We are SIOP trained, we also embed a lot of technology into our classroom. We're very lucky to have access as ESL teachers to iPads and Google Chromebooks and all the different technology that we can use.

So we started using Khan Academy about two years ago in the classroom, and it was pretty interesting because we found that a lot of our ESL students lacked the basic grammar and functional English language skills that we didn’t really have time to sit and teach for long periods of time. So we needed to find a way to kind of embed those skill sets and those TEKS along with our help that we are required to use in Texas by using Khan Academy.

It was really amazing because for our newcomers, we started off, you know, two days a week for them, and they really started picking up on the grammar basics. You know, we went over nouns, you know, verbs, we went over punctuation, and we used Khan Academy as a way to bridge the gap because it was visual and it allowed them multiple opportunities to do the questions without fear of failure. So it was really, really great for them because they were able to see it in a non-threatening environment.

We also used Khan Academy because I do computer science after school with our ESLs, so Khan Academy also has really great programs if you're looking for some interesting things in there, like they have the Pixar in a Box and they also have computer science. So, we use it across the board in our school district.

Jeremy: Very cool! And so, obviously, Khan Academy has all these tools, and there are all these other technology platforms out there. But if you were in the shoes of a teacher who's just starting with technology or just starting with Khan Academy today and trying to serve their English language learners, but now over a remote distance, are there any tips you would give them for just getting started serving that audience?

Jessica: I would say if you do have access to Google Classroom and your ISD has logins for your students, you can automatically log them into Khan Academy using Google. And when you log them in, all they do is they input their login credentials from the school, which makes it so much easier to connect to the actual classroom. Then you're able to give them the class code, so that way they can sync with it. That really helped us, and we did it in small chunks when we first started.

We started with 45 minutes a week, and then we expanded to longer periods of time, but we really focused on the skills that they were missing. Because we have our yearly STAAR, and of course, tests in Texas, our data is always pretty current, so we look at what our students were struggling in. Then we found ways to remedy those areas in order to strengthen them for the test.

Our kids really struggled with editing and revising because they didn’t have the basic foundational skills. So we started small. We started with nouns and simple sentences, and when we did the simple sentences, we would embed the Khan Academy for the structure, and then we would bridge it to a piece of writing and have them identify nouns and verbs. They still get the reading and the writing, and then we were able to do those skills, and move the ones who were a little more advanced could move on, and the ones who struggled we were able to identify them more and be able to work on them one-on-one.

So it's about small chunks at first until you get really comfortable with the program. I really like that I could see, and I would go and check, hey did you do so-and-so assignment? I could see whether or not they viewed the video, I could see what they got in the assignment. I would tell them, if you're struggling with the assignment and you didn’t watch the video, you should probably go back and see what the video has to say before you even start the assignment.

Jeremy: Very cool! I think that's such an important piece of advice right now when everything feels so overwhelming. You just start small—one lesson, one assignment. If your students can sort of get that experience under their belt before you move on to the bigger and bolder things.

Jessica: And what's really great is you can start, you know, if you do nouns for ESL especially, you know, you have to work on the cognates depending on where their language is, where they struggle. Luckily, we're in an area where most of our students are Spanish-speaking and most of the people here are bilingual, but that might not be so in other areas.

We also have a population that speaks Tagalog. So with that, it's really helpful to use like—we use our Duolingo, we use our Khan Academy, we use our Flipgrid in order to kind of bridge the language. What we do is we start with nouns, and then we give an assignment on nouns, so everything connects together. Then we'll give a STAR question that has, like, identifier edit, whatever topic we're working on. So everything's just kind of streamlined, I suppose.

Jeremy: Very cool! So now we've sort of covered some of the basics about how to get students registered, what would you give them as the first assignment, how would you look at some of those results. Let's dig into some of the next step questions from the audience.

Lisa asks a really important question, which is so much of this is in text, and obviously many ELLs, especially the newcomers, really struggle just getting started. What do you do to sort of serve them given this sort of text-based focus of many of these Khan Academy questions?

Jessica: So the way we did that also was we used a variety of models. So that's why it's important to start small—you don’t want to give them too much too fast because it gets very difficult. We do a lot with dictionaries and we start this from the—I know it's hard right now, but we make use of all the online dictionaries. So if you have a Spanish-speaking student, the best online dictionary that we have found has been SpanishDict.com, I believe that's the website address. It's one of the better Spanish-English translators, and it's one that our students use all the time to translate some of those text-based questions.

We start, if you're not in too much of a rush, you can start small. Like a noun is a “sustantivo.” So we do a lot of bridging with the primary language because academic language does take five to seven years to kind of learn, so we bridge a lot with our home language, which is part of our ALPS in Texas, where we're allowed to use the home language of the student in order to bridge those gaps.

We try to at least kind of translate the main ideas—like noun or not a noun. What one problem my kids struggled with in identifying nouns was when the names were from other countries—like I think there's a couple names from Japan and a couple names from other countries in there. So they really struggled with that because they weren't used to other names. So we had to go over that.

What I would do is I did mini lessons, as I was discussing earlier. I do mini lessons, and I upload them to my YouTube. So if the students are asking me questions that I know they're going to struggle with or a concept, instead of doing a live Zoom, I do a mini lesson and then I upload it and share it. That has been by far the easiest for me.

It's really—you can look up cognates, things like that, just to help kind of bridge that gap in the language. I'm not sure what language your students speak, just from experience with my Spanish-speaking students.

Jeremy: Very cool! And that actually speaks to a great question from Paula, which is what's the most user-friendly sort of video engagement tool when you're working with an ESL classroom? It sounds like instead of trying anything really fancy or maybe complicated, YouTube is something that students are really familiar with, and it's easy for you as a teacher to quickly record a video on your phone and then share it with them. Is that right?

Jessica: Yes! For me, I get a little kind of overwhelmed with everything that everyone shares—like Edpuzzle and all of these things—and I'm like, I don’t have time to learn another platform right now. So I've been sticking to what I know: using my phone.

I had recently, as a lot of my EL students, we were doing poetry, and they kept asking me the same question. So really quickly, I pulled out my cell phone, I recorded a three-minute video, really easy, just explaining to them and showing them what I needed them to do. Then I uploaded it into a private YouTube and shared it with them via my communication app, which is what I use: Remind and Google Classroom, since they're already all in there because we've been doing a blended classroom for a while.

So I share it with them, and then that way they're able to access the video on their own time, and that way they can do it at their own pace. It's really important for ESL students; we have to let them do it at their own pace, even more so now because the fact that we're not right next to them. That's one of the most difficult things with this online learning is not being able to be there with them to kind of guide them into what they need to know.

So that was the easiest way for me was doing it through video on my cell phone and then just uploading it. It's not fancy, there's no razzle dazzle, but it works.

Jeremy: And the other thing you had pointed out before, Jessica, was just that especially for low-income students, where there may only be a single device or no device in the home, synchronous communication may actually be really difficult, especially if there are siblings there. That actually leads to a direct question from Amy, who also has a number of low-income students who only have phones at home—not Chromebooks, not laptops. How would you recommend that they use Khan Academy, if at all, given that all they have are their smartphones?

Jessica: That's a really good question. So before they gave me my newer Chromebooks, we had an older cow, and so half the laptops would work, and the other half would just—they just didn’t work at all. What we did was one of my students was like, "Let’s try to download it on your phone and see what happens." So we did, and it is actually mobile-friendly! You can download Khan Academy onto your phone, and you can still assign them lessons from it, and they're able to access it on their phones, which has been a real lifesaver for us too because of the inaccessibility to reliable internet or Chromebooks.

Because we're not a one-to-one district, we tried to give out as many Chromebooks as we could, but we ran out rather quickly, and the same with the hotspots that we delivered. We ran out of them before we could give them to every single student. So because we're not one-to-one, we do a lot of it on mobile, and my students used to turn it in all the time after school, before school. Some of them would even use it in class when their laptops would die, so it is very user-friendly on mobile as well.

Jeremy: Great! Let’s see here... Alicia is asking a really good question: do you recommend always assigning the videos or only the activities and the quizzes themselves and then let the kids watch the videos on their own if they choose to?

Jessica: I always, just for my ESL, you have to gauge what level your ESL kids are. So I have varying levels of ESL students. The ones that are in my English 1 ESL classes are brand new to the country; they speak very little English. So for them, it's required for them to watch the video.

I only give them one assignment, and then I look at the data. Once they've done the assignment, I look at their scores and see if they're ready for the mastery sections. Then I'll assign those sections individually or at the same time when I feel as though they've mastered those skill sets. If they're still scoring in the 60s and 40s, then I see that I need to go back and maybe do a mini lesson really quickly, upload it or assign like a coordinating text or something where they can identify nouns or verbs or comma splices.

Then that way I can see where I can remedy those areas that they're weak on. I would say for ESL students that are beginners, it should always be required that they do the video. It's just more beneficial for them. If you have someone who is more intermediate and advanced, you could probably do the lessons first and then if they're struggling with it, assign the video.

Jeremy: Very cool! Now, a number of teachers, including Stephanie, are asking, is Khan available in different languages?

Jessica: Yes, Khan is actually available in 44 languages as of this moment. So, question for you, Jessica: do you ever have students, especially those newcomers, switch to the Spanish language version of Khan Academy, or do you always have them use the English version sort of build that expertise over time?

Jessica: So what we do for those students is they actually put the subtitles—they put the Spanish subtitles—so they can read it and listen to it at the same time. Again, you would have to gauge where your students are academically. Some may come with lower levels of fluency in their home language. With that, you may want to have them watch the video in both languages. But most of the time, we use subtitles on the videos in order for them to read it in Spanish and hear it in English.

Jeremy: Great! Okay, let's see here. Ronetta wants you to really go deep here. She's really curious about all these platforms you mentioned, like SpanishDict.com and Duolingo. Are there other programs that you really enjoy using and that you would recommend to fellow educators in this moment?

Jessica: We also use Flipgrid a lot in the ESL classrooms, and we use Nearpod for Flipgrid. I really like Flipgrid because we have a standardized test at the end of the year that tests our English secondary learners every year when they're enrolled in Texas school. It's called the TELPAS, and in the TELPAS, they have a speaking portion.

So we use Flipgrid, and we'll ask them questions based on the questions they'll ask them in the TELPAS. Sometimes it's, "Tell me a story," "Tell me what they're doing in this procedural." So it really helps them get used to speaking in English and being able to take that test at the end of the year.

So we use that. Duolingo, yeah, we also are... yeah, I'm thinking, wait, wait, there's so many! Do you think it would be a good thing at this point? If you haven’t done it, probably not, but it's something you could look into for the following year. But Flipgrid definitely is a great tool! So if the kids can’t share their writing, they're more than likely going to try to speak. You can—what I like about Flipgrid too is you can moderate the videos, so nobody else can see them but you.

Jeremy: Absolutely! ESL kids are nervous about speaking, and I'll just say, like having a couple kids at home myself, I know that Flipgrid is such a great way to keep the lines of communication open because it really creates this back-and-forth pattern of engaging with the educator and the family at home. So just a nice way to sort of let them know you're still there and thinking of them.

Speaking of next year, I know that we're very much focused on the here and now—how do we get through the next hour? How do we get through the day? How do we get to next week? But for educators who are already thinking about, whoa, we're going to have a lot of students with a lot of gaps heading into September, is there any way for data to carry over from Khan Academy this year to the students’ Khan Academy account for next year so that data can be used in subsequent years? This is a question from Clarissa.

Jessica: I think it should be, because you're—they're logged into your classroom. Sometimes what we do is, before they even leave, is we'll take all that data out. Because they're ESL kids, we actually have like our LPAC committee, and so we use a lot of that data, and so we give it to the next teacher. So before they leave us, we're able to give the next teacher all their data—their test scores, their Khan Academy—everything that they have until you delete that they stay in there. But I've never had it transfer over, and that's probably something I should ask.

But our school's really big; it's like 2,500 students and a lot of teachers, and I've never really asked the English teacher. I feel kind of bad now because I'm like, maybe I should go ask her.

Jeremy: Oh yeah, absolutely! Definitely check with her. I will mention that, like technologically, it's totally feasible. It's totally feasible as Jessica mentioned. At the very beginning, your student is creating an account with their school email or their Google Classroom login or whatever, and that single account can be logged into multiple classes on Khan Academy at once. And as long as you don’t archive it or delete it, it should still be there.

So if you come into the learner view, which you can always see from your name in the upper right-hand corner, you can actually join multiple classes. So your ELL class, your science class, your math class—all those teachers can be working with a single student account, and that data can be shared, as Jessica mentioned.

And I will also say it’s not just for English— a lot of our biology teachers who teach our ESLs, we also use Khan Academy for biology, we use it for algebra, we use it for SAT prep! So it's not just for the grammar sections. We also use it in other core content areas within our school.

Jessica: Very cool! For our ESLs, yeah. I will mention that Khan not only has a broad sort of range of content; we're actually the official partner with the College Board on SAT. So for the students who are all freaking out about the canceled exams and how do I stay sharp, that's always available. And that's been blessed by the folks who make the SAT themselves.

We do have some ELL students in our AP sections, and we have them practice the SAT and ACT through Khan Academy.

Jeremy: Very cool! Now speaking of all this content, Amy really wants to get into the specifics: do you recommend any particular units or lessons or exercises that would be really effective for ELLs? And to add a little more context, Amy actually works with adult ELLs, just trying to figure out what of all this content might be most useful.

Jessica: That's really interesting because we did host a few adult ESL classes at our school for about maybe six weeks. And so we used it again. What we did was we did a pre-test. So always start with some sort of pre-test in order for you to gauge where they're at because you don’t want to start too low or too high, because either they'll get bored or they get frustrated.

So we give a pre-test out, and from that pre-test, we can see where they can start at what skills that they can use. I mainly start from like concrete and abstract nouns because those are some of the most difficult kind of things that the ELL students are having trouble with, is the concrete and abstract nouns.

Also, they have a lot of trouble with the foreign endings, which is on, I believe, on the grammar sections. So we start with those first, so they can have an idea of what to use. Also, conjunctions—they really struggle with conjunctions as well.

Jeremy: Cool! I hope that helps. Every single course on Khan Academy has this course challenge at the very end. So again, in this case, I clicked into the grammar course, I scrolled all the way down to the bottom, and you can assign this course challenge as an easy way to sort of get pre-testing for here's where folks are.

Then when you go back to actually assign specific pieces of content, you can really use that to inform a very differentiated approach. Just like Jessica mentioned, if you know some folks are very much advanced, some are just beginning, you can assign—not to your entire class—but the specific students these are the ones who need this material, here are the others who need something different.

Very important question from Chris: is Khan Academy free, or does our school need to buy licenses to access all this material?

Jessica: No! Khan Academy is free. So you can get your kids started right away. You don’t need licenses; they can access it from anywhere. That's what I really loved about it was that it was such an open-access concept, and it was really beneficial for our students and for our district. We have 50,000 students in our district, so it can get pricey for us as well.

Jeremy: Absolutely! And just to be clear, this is not one of those free until the end of the school year or until the end of the crisis. Khan Academy is actually not profit, so as long as we keep fundraising money, there will be free Academy for every teacher and every student.

Okay, here we go—this is an interesting question. So Justin says, "I teach U.S. history to high school students, and their native language is Chinese. They are an ELD 1 and 2." What sites would you suggest, especially given everything that's happening? And how do you recommend they use Khan, so thinking about maybe that kind of audience specifically focused on social studies? Any tips you might give Justin?

Jessica: I'm trying to think of ELD...is that like a beginner?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's what he's getting at.

Jessica: Oh, okay! Okay, and obviously there is a U.S. History course in Khan Academy, but it is fairly, like, English-heavy, so maybe that's what he's speaking to.

So when you have really English-heavy things, the best thing to do is just chunk everything. You don’t want to give them too much too fast. So if you're going to go over something—even if you give them a passage to do—you want to chunk that. And the same would go for using things like this.

So you want to give them key vocabulary ahead of time, even while using the online platform. So if you were to take a look at what Jeremy has pulled up where it says like things like continent, history, North American, what you want to do is you want to give them those words ahead of time, and have them try and translate it.

You'd be surprised how many ELL students already have their own translators. My students constantly mispronounce terms, and I'm like, "No, you have to use the dictionary," because the test requires a dictionary.

So what we do is we have them kind of showcase those main vocabulary points, so when they go in, they kind of already have an idea of what the content is going to be about. That's part of the SIOP method, where you're able to give them the key vocabulary and keep focusing on those key vocabularies and that key concept in small chunks, and still be able to use, like, maybe one or two questions from it.

That way they know exactly at least those key ideas. It's not perfect, but it allows them an opportunity to gain more academic language.

Jeremy: And it's just, you know, using pre-vocabulary strategies to help them bridge their gap when speaking another language. I hope that was helpful.

And I think that actually integrates perfectly into this really important high-level question from Pramall, which is: this is a difficult thing even in regular times, but in these abnormal times we find ourselves in, how do you create a productive struggle for students?

How do you balance the desire to translate everything for them with the need for them to grapple with English? Are there any tools or strategies you recommend to find that balance?

Jessica: Because in Texas, we do have our ALPS, and from the beginning of the year to the end of the year we have this timeline that allows us to use primary home language and then kind of weed them off of those translations.

So at the beginning of the year, it's 80-20. And when we say 80-20, it's not bilingual; because in the secondary sections, the secondary high school levels, we don't do bilingual. So that makes sense—it's kind of like, okay, this is "road," but you say "calle." All right, what is "calle"? It's road.

So we allow them to bridge L1 to L2. So we start them off with that bridging, but we work a lot on cognates—and this is just Spanish—but you could probably do it in other languages too. You find the commonly used words that you're going to be using within your classroom.

So if you teach math, what is the common vocabulary you're going to be using all the time? That common vocabulary needs to be used constantly. You need to be saying it so they can hear how you say it, so they can know what it means. A lot of visuals, a lot of when you're using a concept, you put it up on PowerPoint.

I know you can't do that right now because it's online, but you can also do it in a video where you just kind of keep going over those same concepts so they can get the lesson. And you chunk the answers, you chunk the questions, you chunk the readings, and then as they get further along, you start expanding to more rigorous instruction.

That's why we do so much at the beginning of the year with Khan Academy, so they can kind of bridge that language, and we're there to help them. We have their dictionaries there, and we take vocabulary lists, so that way by the time we get to this point in the year, we've already gone to English only.

Jeremy: Got it! Great advice. I know we're almost at time here, and there's still many more questions out there, so one last question for you, Jessica, is: if you want to get support on Khan Academy—either how to use a specific piece of the site or talk to other educators—are there any resources you would recommend to get those questions answered?

Jessica: Yes! There is a Facebook group for Khan Academy educators, and you can ask questions in there. There are a lot of ambassadors also online on Twitter who will give you advice and be able to help troubleshoot. The Khan Academy for Teachers page though is extremely beneficial; there's tons of teachers who are answering questions and asking questions, and it's a great way to connect with people who have already been using Khan Academy for a long period of time, and those who have just started.

Jeremy: Great! I'll also just mention very quickly here, those are all volunteer educators just like Jessica who are going above and beyond right now to help out. If you ever have a very technical question and you want that answer by Khan Academy staff, just go up to your name in the upper right-hand corner, come down here to the help section, and then all you have to do is say "Report a Problem." It doesn't have to be a formal technical bug, but just a question about how to get something done—send that in and let us know, and we'll respond back there.

So Jessica, I know we're at time. I want to thank you so much for making time to share your expertise today and pay it forward to the next generation of Khan teachers. I want to thank everyone else out there for making time out of their busy schedules to invest in this session.

I want to thank everybody for trying their hardest during this difficult time and working with the ELL students. You're doing such great work, and you're in the right place to help them. Khan Academy can help you do that—wonderful!

Oh, those words. Let's head into a well-deserved weekend! Thank you all for everything you're doing right now to make your students' lives a little brighter. Thank you again, Jessica, for making us all a little smarter this afternoon. Have a great weekend!