Khan Academy Best Practices for ELA

Hey everyone, this is Jeremy, she a fling at Khan Academy. Thanks so much for joining our session on best practices for using Khan Academy with ELA. To that end, we are very lucky to have Madeline, one of our superstar ambassadors, on the line today to talk about that very topic: how she uses Khan Academy's ELA content in her own classroom and how you can use it in our new remote learning environment.

As a quick refresher, if you're new to these webinars, feel free to ask questions at any time using the questions feature. After Madeline lays out sort of the key points she wants to share with you about using Khan Academy in your classroom, she'll take your questions live, so share them via the questions format. And here we go!

So Madeline, welcome! Thank you so much for joining us today.

Absolutely! Thank you so much. We're super excited to have you here. Just to give folks a sense of where you're coming from, tell us about your own journey as an educator.

Absolutely! So this is my eighth year of teaching, and I've been really lucky to have very different teaching experiences. I have taught in two different states in five districts. I've taught in rural, suburban, and urban settings, and I've taught middle school and elementary. Currently, I teach third grade.

Very cool. And how long have you been using Khan Academy for, and what do you typically use it for in your classroom?

So I've used it for a little over two years, and I use it for a lot! I got started mainly using it for math, and that's how I do my math work, actually, is through Khan Academy. But over time, as I've gotten more comfortable with it, I use so much on it now. I use grammar, I use the ELA beta that just came out recently, I used the computer programming, and I also used history.

Very cool! Okay, sounds like you're a Khan Academy's super user, so that's perfect. That's what we need! And so for those who want to aspire for super user status but are just getting started today, especially in this difficult environment we find ourselves in, any beginner tips for just getting started with Khan Academy, especially as it pertains to ELA?

You know, I think that some of the easiest ways to get started—well, if you're elementary, I really recommend adding multiple courses to your classroom, so adding math, grammar, and the beta ELA, and then just kind of explore what those have to offer. I think the ELA beta is really awesome to be able to use as more complete units of study, and then the grammar is nice for those little check-ins to reinforce skills you've taught in the classroom.

Very cool! Let's actually just pull up some of that so folks can see it on their screen. We've just added a new class, and out of curiosity, I know it's always comes up: how do you even get your students enrolled? I know it's especially a challenge with elementary students.

Yeah, so if you're middle or high school, I say don't enroll them yourself; share it, push it out via Google Classroom. It's really easy on Khan Academy to do it that way. But if you're elementary, especially right now, I would just go ahead and create your students' accounts for them. I know that so many parents are overwhelmed, and so that's just one thing that you can do. All you have to do is type in the student's name, and then a username and password will be created. Then you can just email it out to families, and it's really easy. Just download the CSV. For sure, some people skip that, and which is really interesting to me. Don't skip it! Download it so that you have that on your computer. I mean, you can access it other ways, but I mean, that's going to be the easiest.

Great! And so, you know, once someone has created their class and they've applied all those different courses that you were talking about, how do you even get started? Like how would you get a student using ELA on Khan Academy for the first time?

So, um, what you're gonna want to do is first you're gonna want to assign something so that when the students get into Khan Academy, there is something for them to do. I teach third grade, so I would go into the third grade beta and just click on a unit. So right now, I've been doing a lot of actually the vocabulary, and because we've done so much of that work in the classroom, I think it's nice during this time to first start off with something you have already covered with them in person. If this is new to them, they're gonna feel more comfortable. If, okay, I know what context clues are, then they can do an assignment that feels a little bit more familiar, even if it's a new website. So that's what I started with. We've been doing so much context clues, so I find them something on there that they feel comfortable with, and here's an example of what some of those questions look like.

Now imagine that someone is going to start kind of coming for the first time, not having that sort of prior experience in the classroom with it. Would you recommend rolling this out like over a Zoom conversation or Google meeting? Or how would you even give students a sense of what they're supposed to be doing and what an assignment looks like?

Yeah, so I would definitely do some sort of live meeting and get them excited about it. Explain why you're gonna be using it. Maybe you want to share, you know, if you're not familiar with Khan Academy, they get mastery points, and they get to create avatars for themselves and things like that. And so, um, if you're working with younger kids like I am or even some of the older kids, they get excited about that. So walking them through it, you know, through shared screens so that they can see what it looks like.

Um, the first time I did Khan Academy or the first time I do Khan Academy with my class at the beginning of the year, we always do an assignment together. And so, um, you can do that in, you know, your live hangout. You could have each of the kids write down the answer they think is the correct one and pull it up, and then they were doing it together, and they're getting a tutorial on how to use it.

Very cool! And so when you're ready to sort of like go to prime time and say, "Okay, I want to make this part of my regular classroom fabric," such as our classrooms exist today, how would you build it into your routine? How would you make it easy and regular for your students?

And so I think that depends on what your schedule looks like right now. I know that for some teachers, they are putting an announcement every day on Seesaw. Well, you can put a link into Seesaw. Some people are doing assignments through Google Classroom. Some people are doing a live check-in every day. So for me, I'm doing mostly live check-ins, and so at the end of my time, I remind them, "Okay, now it's the time that you're gonna get onto Khan Academy. I want you to do the assignment that's named such-and-such."

Um, and so just building it in that way would be what I would suggest.

Very cool! I'll just mention that every piece of content on Khan Academy has a unique URL, so if you ever just didn't either paste a link to a video or to a specific exercise, you can do that right into Seesaw or a learning management system in addition to the assignment process that works like this.

As far as the reporting goes, I know we're in a very different environment right now, but how much are you looking at those reports? Are you translating it into grades as a matter?

So I am not doing grades. Um, that's not an expectation at the elementary level. However, I am still using those reports. So one of the things that I see as fantastic about Khan Academy is there are great videos that are tutorials, right, for the students to use. So I don't have to spend my time doing that; there's great lessons. I don't have to spend my time doing that. Instead, I can use my time looking at those reports.

And so just a quick story of what happened today: I assigned two math assignments, and I was looking at the scores from students. One of my top math kids scored poorly. And so then I was able to look at a different report which shows student activity. So then it shows me how long students have spent—not just navigating the pages but actually on the assignments—and he had spent six minutes on two assignments, which is just not enough for that type of assignments that I had uploaded.

And so because I had this extra time, I was able to check in with that family. And I just said, "You know, hey, how did the assignments go?" Oh, it turns out their Wi-Fi was in and out, and he was really stressed about that and tried to get both assignments in before the Wi-Fi went out again. And so I wouldn't have known that if I didn't have those reports to look back on. I could have just been like, "Oh, this was a tough skill for him," and moved on. But instead, I got to build that relationship and talk to him about, "Oh, you know, it's totally fine if you have to wait until later to get it done. That's fine; there's no, um, you know, stress to get this done right away."

Very cool! So I love how you close the feedback loop there. Like, I feel like as teachers in our normal classrooms, we're constantly having that feedback loop all day, every day, where a student does some work, we're giving them a response, they're getting that needed feedback versus that's so hard in this sort of remote learning environment, but you're still closing that loop using Khan Academy to generate the data.

Yeah, super really good. So the questions are starting to pour in. Okay, so if you're good, Madeline, I'd love to bring up a question from Don and Herb and Kelly, which is, "What does an ELA beta... what does that even mean? How can we be thinking about that?"

So it's basically, um, Khan Academy— and you can talk to this probably much better, but, um, they are adding English language arts as part of their lessons, and they're just in beta right now. So that means that they're testing them out; they're seeing what's working well, what's not, getting feedback from people so that they can improve them over time. But right now, there's multiple topics that you can choose from, so there's reading passages, there’s nonfiction and fiction, and then there's also just specific skills, like I talked about with the vocabulary—like utilizing glossary, some dictionaries, and things like that. So I’m super excited about it!

Cool! And just share the link with everyone. If you're gonna use it and give us feedback, please just use that link to let us know because our content developers are really eager for that kind of information. Speaking of feedback loops, let’s see here.

So, woo! Okay, so Ramona says, "I'm a fifth-grade ELA and social studies teacher looking for ways to integrate Khan Academy into my remote learning construction. I already have my students working through Google Classroom. Are there any special tips you would offer for Google Classroom users, given they use it?"

Awesome! So I use Google Classroom too, and there's a lot of compatibility between Khan Academy and Google Classroom, which is fantastic. And you can actually, in your Khan Academy account, even sync your Google Classroom to your Khan Academy class.

And yeah, perfect! And then explain a little bit more about what syncing looks like. What does that actually do for the teacher or for the students?

So then it just makes it, um... well, I wish that I could. Oh yeah, I don't know. You’d have to share your screen because I know you got your students' personal information out there. We bet our fabricated data here. Yeah, so then it just shares the information.

Yeah, yeah—I think the easiest way to explain it is like if you’ve already done the hard work of getting students on in Google Classroom and everyone is all set up there. If you have to add a student or change a student in Google Classroom, those changes are automatically populated in your Khan Academy class so that way you have to double work because it's all being fed over. And I know there’s been a lot of concern about, like, too much information going out to families, and so this is a way that you can cut down on that, and there’s less for the students to click.

What about a really juicy question for you from Kathleen? I love this question! I know that it's very tempting in the middle of this crisis to be totally focused on just getting through the day. I was turning that way most days, but if we're already thinking about next year and setting our students up for success, if a student starts Khan Academy this year, will their data go with them to their next year's teacher so they could benefit from understanding what they've done so far?

Oh, that's an awesome question! Um, if... well, it depends on, um, hopefully your students are signing up with their school email and—or just using the same login—then my understanding is that it should. Um, I haven't followed the same group of students; I was teaching at an older grade, but from what my students have told me, it follows them.

What do you have more on that?

Absolutely! Now you nailed it! So basically, as long as they're logging in with their school account and that school account stays the same, they'll carry all that good information with them, and future teachers can benefit!

Lots of questions from high school educators like Nancy and Jennifer say, "Hey, I love all this stuff for third and eighth-grade ELA. What about us high school teachers? Would you recommend that the vocabulary and grammar lessons are relevant for those students as well?"

I think it really depends on the students. I mean, you are the experts on your students. You're gonna know that the best. I've used the grammar with middle school, and I'm sure high school teachers, you would agree that there are some holes in grammar. And so I would certainly use it for high school! And what you might just want to change what that looks like, and you might want to—well, there's unit tests for each and every thing. So like, if we go to sentences and clauses or if we go to nouns, and there's gonna be a unit test, so it might just look different where you will find that at the beginning and see how they do on that and then figure out what individual skills you want to go over instead of finding every single assignment.

I love that! Actually, you echoed exactly what Tim Vandenberg, your fellow ambassador, had shared a couple of weeks ago, which is even for sixth graders, he has them go back and actually master each of these things. They forget they didn't learn about nouns in first grade, and if they didn't learn about adverbs in third grade, he can actually fill in those gaps and make sure they're ready for sixth-grade work or even ninth-grade work.

Yep!

Okay, let’s see here. Okay, here’s an important question, I think, that really speaks probably to the elementary population that you're most familiar with. Marta wants to know, “If I've already created the student usernames and passwords via the process that you just outlined, what should I send to the parents and the students themselves? Should I just send them that information directly, or is there any preferred way to go about that communication?”

Um, so I’ve never had to do it with distance learning, um, so that's a great question. Um, what I would do is, I mean, again, each school looks different right now. We’re having to send out a weekly email to parents, so you could input it within that. And so that's probably what I would do; it's just a screenshot of the user in each individual username, and you could do that easily.

Oh, perfect! Yeah, I was gonna add—I think you’re absolutely right! Totally the best way to do it. Whatever is natural for your sort of communication style. If using Seesaw or screen capture tools, Khan Academy does have a formal letter to parents where you can list it; that’s in a bunch of different languages, which I'll share in the chat here. And you can always take advantage of these if you just need some language to get started with. But I think that your point is totally valid, Madeline.

Okay, hopefully, they get you started, Marta. I know it's a tough, tough thing to do mid-stream, especially given that the stream we're wading in right now is very deep.

Ooh! Here’s a really interesting question; they’re gonna challenge you a little bit! But Shelly, who’s actually working with students that are focused on GED, wants to know if there are parts of Khan Academy that are actually even appropriate for self-directed learning—so that’s about assignment, assignment, assignment—more about, “I’m empowered to go forth and learn as a student.”

Yeah, actually, I think that something that the more comfortable you can get any student with Khan Academy, the more that will naturally happen. It means for an older learner, it’s gonna happen very naturally. It can definitely be self-paced. Some of my third graders, in the time that they were waiting for me to get up and running with online education, assigned to themselves computer programming and biology and started going through those lessons. So absolutely, this would be great for self-paced instruction!

Very cool! And just to make that really, really sort of lucid, you know, any single user of Khan Academy, whether you're a teacher or a student, can always click this courses button in the upper left-hand corner and really can start digging in on whatever they’re curious about. So if you do have adult learners or older learners, we're just ready to just dominate grammar or whatever it is that they need to learn, they can get started even without assignments always available to you.

Okay, great questions, Shelly! Great response, Madeline!

Woo! Here’s a tough one! So Krista says, “When sending us up for an autistic eighth-grade girl, what do you think is the best approach? And if the student had ADHD, would you think about it differently in terms of engagement?”

So basically, just thinking about all your different kinds of learners, I need advice for making sure that they're all served really well using a tool like Khan Academy.

Mm-hmm! So again, it’s going to depend on your individual student and what works best for them. So for one of my students who has autism, she actually really prefers the videos on Khan Academy to anything else. The use of color is really calming to her, and she loves it. When I posted a video of my online instruction, her mom emailed me and said, "Is there actually a Khan Academy version?" So for her, it worked really well and so much better. For another one of my students this year that has autism, he does not like the Khan Academy videos, but he loves the activity and doing the assignment on there. He just prefers getting the instruction from me. So there’s gonna be, you know, give-and-take, and I'm just— I guess having that conversation with them about what's working with this and what's not. And, you know, teachers, we’re really flexible, so just keeping that flexibility with this as well.

Very cool! Great feedback! Actually, very similar, Sera wants to know, “Do you have any students who are English language learners? And if so, how do you address that given that so much of this is text-based?”

Mm-hmm! So, I do have some students that are English language learners. So you can actually turn on captions, and I will do that with the videos because sometimes they’ll miss something, or you know, they will think that two words of the same one, and so it just helps with clarity. So far, it has not been a huge issue for my students to navigate it, but there have been times where, with some of the ELA, I've been moving down to some second grade—not because they aren't able to do the academics, but I can't put the same supports in with this distance learning, or at least I haven't figured out a perfect way to do that yet. And so there are some times where I might use just a little bit simpler level so that they can access it easier.

Great advice!

Balland, that actually sort of leads to a bigger question. Can you speak to the idea of differentiation on Khan Academy more broadly? You know, when we did our initial demo, we were mostly talking about lockstep; everyone gets the same assignment. If you want to serve each student where they are, how would you go about doing that?

There are so many different ways to do that! Um, and it might even actually be easier for you because you've been working with your students in person up to this point, so you probably have a pretty good idea of where they're at. So you can kind of find from there. If you don't, if it's a new concept, then you can see how they're doing on the assignments, and then you can scale back.

There’s actually, um, if you're doing math—there’s very clear cut: like if you need remediation in third grade, click here; if you need, you know, supports for this, click here. And then with ELA, it's not there yet, but because it's in beta, but you can just yourself look through the different levels, and you can make it more challenging for your students that need that. I find them a fourth grade or a fifth grade, or you know, go the other way.

Cool! And just to sort of operationalize that, anywhere you can make assignments on the site, whether it's on the lesson itself or in the teacher classroom, you always have the chance to do all students or just some of the students, and so you can really make sure that every student is getting what they need, not just whatever the class is getting.

Um, speaking of getting what you need, Nathan, a parent, actually asks a really important question, which is, “Okay, I'm a parent of a second grader, and I'm trying to make sure that my daughter has what she needs to get ready for third grade, but I don't want to just skip to third grade and start her on that ELA beta. Do you recommend anything to get started at that second grade level?”

Um, well, so I would suggest doing some of the grammar lessons; that would be really, really good. There are some pretty basic things in there, like nouns or singular nouns, things like that. So I would do that. I would think, and then—but I don’t think there’s any harm with doing what beta is available for second grade and filling the time for now.

Yeah!

Have you ever, um, used Khan Kids with your students at all, Madeline?

Well, yeah! My students— but I have two little ones! Oh, with my three-year-old, he is using Khan Academy, and you know, he's not going to preschool anymore, which was pretty devastating for him. And so he uses Khan Academy Kids, and um, he he loves it! And he was really excited because that is continuing to develop. So recently, there were assignments for first grade that came up, and he was so excited about new videos!

And so it's a great tool! Um, it's an app that, um, it'll go through short lessons, and you can either select the lessons yourself or you can just press play, and it will lead you through lessons.

Absolutely! It's all free, all available on these app stores, as you can see on the screen. And in some ways, that’s easy to get started with, especially in this remote learning environment because, like you said, Mallory, you just started and just go. You don’t have to worry about these assignments and everything else, so it could be a nice way for the early elementary educators out there to get their students started!

And you can still report, right?

Right!

Oh, Mouse! Sara from Guilford County, North Carolina, asked, and this is a very important question: can you actually preview the lesson in videos before you assign them, or are you basically just sitting in the dark and hoping for the best?

No, you can absolutely preview anything! I do the assignment myself. Now, sometimes, with some of the assignments, there are lots of different possible questions that could be asked, and I'll just run through one possibility but just so I have a good idea of what I’m actually asking students to do. So yes, you can preview everything, which is really nice. You can preview! Because you can, the students when they're doing the assignment can have access to hints! And so I like to see what those are going to look like for the student.

Very cool! And a little pro tip just to go along with that is if you're ever curious what your students are experiencing—I’m sure you are—add yourself as a student in your own classroom, and that way, you actually have the ability to see every email, every notification, everything your students are about to get. Now all you have to do is come in here to your classroom dashboard, go to the class code— so over here in the upper right-hand corner— and then under your name, go to learner home, and from there, you can actually add yourself as a student and see everything with students through their eyes. Have you ever done that, Madeline?

Has ever?

Okay, cool! Also, I just add courses that I'm interested in, so like I think I have astronomy in there right now, and I show the kids, "Like, hey, this is something I'm excited about! I'm gonna be learning!" And so then they kind of feel like, "Oh, you're using us too. You're a learner too,” and kind of build that connection too.

I love that! I need tips! Speaking of that, about just like growth mindset, especially in this moment when we feel like so deflated and we're like, "I don’t even want to, you know, think about tomorrow!" How do you keep your students feeling really strong and persistent right now?

Um, that's a good question! We, you know, just keeping things light! At the beginning of each academic year, I do growth mindset lessons with them through Khan Academy. Um, that’s of course that they have available that is nice to help kids get into that mindset. But I think just continuing the connection with your kids is so important in whatever way!

Pretty cool! And then, two final questions for you. Number one: where do you typically go to get support if you run into challenges with Khan Academy or just want to learn from other educators?

So there are some Facebook groups for Khan Academy educators, and that's really nice because you get feedback really quickly. You can just type in your question, like, "Hey, who's run into this?" or "Hey, you know, I'm running into this issue. How have you motivated students?" And you get responses really quickly. So I highly recommend joining that! It is a private group, so you just have to ask for access.

Very cool! And then lastly, you know, as we face the tough, tough month ahead of us and maybe even a little more, any words of wisdom that you want to share with ELA educators out there just as far as how to stay strong in this moment and how to serve their students the best way possible?

I think take a deep breath, and less is more. You're doing the best that you can for your students just by being there and by trying. And it's just gonna be a steep learning curve, so try to have as much fun with it as you can.

Cool! I think those are great words to end on! So Madeline, thank you so much for being with us today, away from your own children, your own students, to serve other educators. And thank you all for joining us, and we wish you well on your journey in the next couple of months ahead!

Absolutely! Have a great deal!