New Hampshire Summer Learning Series Session 3: Master the SAT with “Khan Academy and SAT Prep”

The SAT prep are actually Mastery-enabled courses, and we'll talk about what mastery enablement means in a second. But there are actually two different courses: there's a reading and writing SAT prep course and a math SAT prep course. The content of both of those courses includes in-depth lesson articles with practice exercises. Those exercises are built on three different difficulty levels: Foundation questions, medium difficulty questions, and advanced questions. This helps scaffold the students, so it meets them where they're at with all of the various skills that are being assessed.

For students and teachers, there's access to progress reports, including a skills progress report. If you join the district partnership, administrators will also have access to other reports where they can see how their entire school, all their teachers, and all their students are doing. The courses also have assignments, course challenges, which we'll talk about, quizzes, and unit tests. Besides all of that content, there's information for students about time management, what to expect on test day, and how to create a test prep plan for themselves. So, there’s just a lot of really robust content within each of those courses.

The reading and writing course consists of 11 units covered by 41 different exercises. Within the platform, there are hundreds of official SAT items within the reading and writing content area. We’ve expanded this course this summer, so there are even more questions than there were previously, which is really exciting. In the math section, there are 13 units that have covered over 111 exercises. So overall, between these two courses, there are thousands of items that students can use to support their mastery of this content.

Khan Academy itself is really based on mastery learning, which helps students understand progress over time. It allows them to slow down when they need to and skip skills if they're already proficient at them. So we are really focused on this overall mastery learning, and so fundamentally, mastery learning encourages all students to work at their own pace. The key message when you talk to students is that you should have them focus on the skills that they need help with, right? Instead of just moving through everything and kind of just getting through it all, make sure they're focusing on those skills that they really need to work on.

Within the Khan Academy platform, students level up skills in these mastery-enabled courses by answering questions, exercises, quizzes, and unit tests, for example. As they level up these skills, it demonstrates their additional proficiency. They might start at "attempted," where they’re getting fewer than 70% of questions correct, and then they can move up to "familiar." If they get 100% of questions correct in a particular exercise, that gets them into that purple area of proficiency, and that purple is really where we want them to be.

The mastery piece comes through a kind of mixed review. We want them to see that skill in another context, in another kind of way, for them to be able to demonstrate their mastery. So when we talk about leveling up skills, this is what we're talking about: going from attempted to familiar to proficient to mastered. We really want them to focus on those purple areas in terms of what we call efficacious use. Based on our research, we would say that two skills to proficient or mastered per week is kind of the goal we want students to reach.

Now that depends also, right? If a student is taking the SAT and they are starting to practice a month before they take the SAT, they probably want them to level up more than two skills a week, right? They have to move through that course a little bit quicker. But if they're starting at the beginning of their junior year with the SAT prep courses, two skills a week is really a great target for them to get to. And then if they have KIGO, which with your district partnership they would, students are going to have that one-to-one support to help them level up these skills to get, again, to that purple area.

Now let's pivot to talk about the digital SAT prep courses and how they're organized. You'll see that they're really rooted in how the SAT has been developed. As you likely know, there are two sections of the SAT: a reading and writing section and a math section. Each section assesses skills in four different content domains. So, for example, in the reading and writing section, the content domains are information on ideas, structure, expression of ideas, and standard English conventions. Then you can see the four for math. This is consistent with how the SAT is developed with these four content domains.

If we then think about those content domains and how they translate into the course, again, keep in mind these four for reading and writing: information, ideas, craft, and structure. For instance, when we look at the table of contents for the reading and writing course, you will see how those content domains translate into the units. As I mentioned before, each of those is scaffolded in different difficulties. So you've got the foundations for information and ideas, you've got medium difficulty information on ideas, and you’ve got advanced information on ideas. This is how the content domains are covered; they go over each different difficulty level to again scaffold the students for what they need.

This is also how the math course is set up, where you have the domains and the difficulty level within each unit of the course. Now let's go even deeper. The College Board has determined that there are specific skills that are going to be assessed within each domain. For instance, within the craft and structure domain, there are three skill or knowledge testing points that are addressed on the SAT. The first is words in context, where students have to determine the meaning of academic words or phrases in context or use vocabulary in a concise conceptual way. Then there’s text structure and purpose, where students need to analyze the structure of a text or determine the main idea of a text.

There’s also cross-text connections, where students have to draw a reasonable connection between two related texts. Those are the three skills in the craft and structure domain. If you're interested in learning more about the domains and the skills on the SAT, the College Board does document all of this in the assessment framework, which can be found on their website. So just Google assessment framework, and you'll have all the information that you want and more about those domains and skills. This is how we're scaffolding this, right? You've got the domain of craft and structure, and you've got those three skills underneath, and so this is how it kind of comes together within the course.

If we keep our focus on craft and structure, for instance, we can dive into a specific unit. At the top, you can see this is Unit 3; it's at the foundation difficulty level, and the domain being assessed is craft and structure. As you move down, you can see the specific skill which is words in context as being the first skill being reviewed within this particular unit. Each skill has a detailed lesson for the student to go through, as well as two sample videos for the students to watch and help them understand that particular skill.

Once they get through the lesson and the videos, they can go to a practice exercise where they’re going to get about four questions on that specific skill. This is the opportunity for the students to demonstrate their proficiency by answering all of those questions in that set correctly. If they answer all four questions, they move to that purple proficiency level. If they don't, they're going to be in that orange familiar or attempted level. They can go back, rewatch the lesson, rewatch those videos, or use KIGO to help them really understand what they're missing within that particular question or concept to help them move to proficiency on that particular skill.

If we zoom out of a particular unit, students are provided with a visual representation of their entire course. Students can see mastery points, which gives them their overall progress that they've made within that course, or they can see an image which is the skill summary that breaks down their proficiency in each one of those specific skills. Each one of those squares that you see is a specific skill within the digital SAT math course, for instance, and you can see within the colors that there are some that are orange, and we want to move them to the purple. We want those to move to proficiency, so this helps students understand, "Okay, maybe I’m at a familiar level." The half-orange square—that’s one I’m going to focus on to try to get up to proficiency.

It just gives a good visual for students on where they should work. Remember, best practices suggest at least two skills to proficient or mastered each week. But again, that’s also assuming that a student has started preparing for the SAT well before they plan to take the test. Let's assume that most students are going to get the bulk of their preparation during their junior year before they plan to take the SAT. There are lots of different ways that students engage with these prep courses. For example, your school may have an SAT prep class; it might be a full-year class, a semester class, or some schools might have a seminar or advisory period where, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, students work on the digital SAT prep courses.

After-school programs or summer school programs are also a way students engage within these courses. You might not have any of those, and so maybe your core ELA or math teachers are having students go through the digital SAT prep course during independent work time. For instance, if you do not have any of that, students could just be working on these courses on their own at home. Maybe their parent is making them work on these courses, but there are lots of different ways that students engage with these courses.

So if you could, in the chat, take a minute and consider all of the various ways that, at your school, your students are engaging with this course and throw that in the chat for me so we get a sense of how your students are using the SAT prep courses, if at all. Alright, we got one advisory class, student-driven experiences. Any other ways? Okay, flex period. Good. Any other ways your students are engaging within this as a supplemental resource in their core courses?

So there is no right answer to this or wrong answer, but it's important to know the various ways that your students can be working on these courses. We've developed this new implementation guide as a way to help you think about what are some options and best practices depending on whatever model your students may be engaged in. So I'll make sure that Danielle and Barbara have access to this implementation guide so that you can look at it as necessary.

One example is having this eight-month preparation program. We offer some good strategies, some better strategies, and the best strategies for students who have this long to prepare for the SAT. It could be in a year-long SAT prep course, it could be in a year-long advisory course, or just students who have about eight months on their own at home that they're planning to use to prepare for the SAT. So there are different strategies. Besides the strategies, this guide also has sample schedules for students to follow regarding what units they should be working on and when they should be taking practice tests.

But as a reminder, these are only recommendations. Every student is different in terms of how much preparation they need, the type of preparation they need, and that's really the beauty of the SAT prep courses; it can meet students where they're at, no matter where they're at.

Finally, in this implementation guide, if you're thinking kind of holistically about getting students prepared to take the SAT throughout high school, we offer a suggested preparation model for what students can be doing in their ninth-grade year, their tenth-grade year, and then during eleventh grade to prepare for the SAT. This is really a four-year plan. The best and greatest advice, though, in those early high school years is just to make sure that your students are getting high-quality research-based instructional strategies that are hitting your standards. If they're doing that, they're going to be fine.

But we obviously offer some support and some Khan Academy resources if you need them. We'll make sure that you get access to this implementation guide if you're interested. In general, when you’re helping students think about best practices and preparing for the SAT, the first thing that we want them to do is start early. There may be some students who start a month or two before they take the SAT; it is what it is; it's going to happen.

But the earlier they start, the better off they're likely going to be. We really want them working towards a course mastery goal. So, having teachers set a course mastery goal for students, depending again on what’s appropriate and how long they have, will really help them establish short-term goals on where they need to be throughout that entire course. We want them to take multiple course challenges, and I'll talk about what those are in a second. Students really should also be taking regular practice tests in Blue Book and reviewing their responses to identify strengths and weaknesses.

So we've got this robust content in the digital SAT prep courses, but it's really more powerful to combine that with them taking practice tests in Blue Book. Those two components combined give them the best chances of success in their preparation plan. When they take the tests, it's really important for students to take them with the same time and break schedule that they're going to have on test day.

So if you can have teachers proctor the practice exams or if you can encourage parents at home to proctor the practice exams using the same timing and breaks as they will have on test day, it makes students more comfortable, it eliminates some of the anxiety on test day, and it gives them practice with stamina and time management. Thus, having them take the practice test with the amount of time that they’re going to have is really important.

Finally, if you don't have a way of supporting your students in school, then really encourage your parents to allocate dedicated time and quiet space at home for students to engage in Khan Academy so that they can work through these prep classes on their own.

As I mentioned, the course challenge is really important because it does help give students kind of an initial idea of where they’re at within this course. It provides instant meaningful data that can be utilized throughout the year. We do suggest doing it three times: at the beginning of the year, which is that initial progress monitoring, and the middle of the year and the end of the year are also great times for students to engage with these course challenges. It's a survey of the entire course, so it’s not going to ask questions on every single skill. They’re going to get 30 questions and have about 30 to 45 minutes to complete that course challenge, but it helps level up some of those boxes.

Instead of starting at white, having not started on anything, giving them that course challenge starts moving some of those boxes up to familiar or attempted. So it’s a great tool as an initial spot to identify strengths and areas for improvement for students. In summary, if you’re going to use the SAT course in school, we’d want you to have the teachers add that SAT course in Khan Academy for their students.

Create a course mastery goal, once that initially has been done. Assign a course challenge at the beginning of the year, and then what's really important is to make sure that you're communicating those goals. If you want two skills to proficient or mastered a week, let students know that; let teachers know that. Make sure that they're aware of what those expectations are, and also communicate this with parents so that they understand if they want to help at home and monitor their students' progress, they can do so as well.

We talked about leveling up two skills a week as kind of a best practice, which translates to having students practice at least 30 minutes a week. It could be 30 minutes on one day, but it also could be 10 minutes three days a week. So however you can fit that into your schedule, or students can do that at home, 30 minutes is a good target of time usage per week.

As students are progressing through these courses, we want them to track their progress. Helping students track their own progress with goal trackers or some way to help them understand how they’re moving through the courses is helpful. Sharing this data with colleagues and parents also helps move the needle and keeps motivation going throughout the year. When you're done with that term, whatever that may be, celebrate success. Make sure that students feel like they’ve accomplished something and have some excitement going into that SAT where they feel confident and ready to take that assessment.

As teachers, all your teachers will have access to the KIGO teacher tools, and there are a couple of tools that are really helpful for teachers within the SAT prep courses. As I mentioned, there’s a lesson with each skill. If there's an SAT prep course at your school, for instance, and your teacher wants to be able to teach that skill, writing a lesson plan on that particular lesson is a great, easy way for teachers to have ideas and ways to teach that lesson.

In some of our SAT prep courses, we see that maybe the social studies teacher is teaching that, and they really might not know how to teach the math content. Those lesson plans are going to give teachers a really great idea on how to engage students within the SAT prep course. The class snapshot is very powerful; it gives teachers a 7-day kind of overview of what students have been doing within the SAT prep course, how many skills they’ve leveled up, so it’s just a quick little snapshot.

Then, recommended assignments—again, KIGO will look at how students have been doing throughout the SAT course and say, “Okay, these three students should work on this assignment, and these four students should work on this assignment,” and teachers can assign those assignments right from KIGO. They don’t have to go to any other place for that. There are lots of ways that teachers can be supported within these SAT prep courses as well.

Alright, I was going to show you a quick little demo before I do that and go into the platform itself. Are there any questions that you have? Anything coming through? I don't think I saw anything, Daniel, that came through during the presentation. Okay, no questions so far. Alright, great. So let’s do a quick little demo. Can you still see my screen or no? Yes? Okay.

When teachers or administrators go to Khan Academy, there’ll be a certain dashboard view that they go to. This is the teacher view. So within a district partnership, if your teachers have used Khan Academy prior where they’ve just signed up on their own and had students join their courses, they’ve usually had a join code or had students join their class. With a district partnership, that doesn't need to happen. This happens automatically; your district will roster your students and staff, so it’s already there in Khan Academy. There’s no need for a join code or getting students to enter that class; they’re there.

If I go down to my SAT prep class from a teacher standpoint, let me go to the activity overview. The first tab is just a general sense of how your students have been doing in a particular timeframe. You can see what Richard’s been doing; you can see that he's been working in SAT Math. You can look at the particular units that he's been working on, and you can even drill down into the specific skills that he's been working on.

Richard has been spending 15 minutes during the last seven days; he’s worked on five skills, leveled up three, and has gotten one to proficient or mastered. This is just a general sense of the activity report that teachers will have. They can drill down to specific skills. If I want to look at my SAT Math course and I want to look at the foundation skills in Algebra, I can drill down to see which students are at the attempted, familiar, and no one’s proficient or mastered level.

So maybe John and Scott are familiar here. I can assign that particular skill right to John and Scott so I want to move them up to proficient. There's a way to really target specific skills and specific students as needed. Teachers also have access to looking at mastery. If you set a course mastery goal, which we would recommend, you can see how students are progressing through that course. You can look at how students are progressing through specific units, so it gives teachers really great information about how their students are moving through this.

If I quickly go over to the administrator dashboard, this will look a little bit different. Again, the administrator dashboard is only available for district partnerships, but the administrator will have a chance to see how their school is doing on skills, average skills to proficient, KIGO usage, learning minutes, and skills leveled up. I can also, as an administrator, really drill down into those courses. So if I really want to know how my students are doing in that digital SAT Math course, I can drill down to my specific schools, look at each SAT prep class in that school, and I can look at all my students and how they're progressing.

So, good! Really, a lot of robust information for administrators as well so they can kind of track how things are going within their classrooms. The last thing I wanted to show you is to go over the teacher tools. I mentioned a few of them about the lesson planning, for instance, but there's a lot more, like exit tickets, lesson hooks, or refreshed my knowledge—lots of different things.

The one I really love and I wanted to show you, I talked about the recommended assignments. Let me show you that real quick. I’m going to go to my eligible class. It’s going to say, “Hey, KIGO. I can group your students based on what they should work on and help you assign that content.” You can pick particular classes, or if you have a particular student in mind, you could mention that student’s name, and KIGO would recommend assignments for that particular student.

But let me just click on my Algebra 1 class because I've got more content in this demo account for that. So I'm asking essentially what should I assign my Algebra 1 class. As you see, it groups the students. So you've got Martin, Julie, Brandy, and Douglas. Here are two particular activities that they should work on, and then here's group two. Rachel just has these things. So right from KIGO, I can assign those items. I can assign to all students, or if I just decide I want to assign all of them, I can do that. You can give start dates, due dates, times, but it's really again focused on what that group of students has been doing within that particular course.

I love the recommended assignments piece. But in closing, I want to show you the real-world context generator, and I think this one’s my favorite because I think a lot of times we get comments from parents, other teachers, or students of, “I’m not going to college; why do I need to take this SAT? It doesn’t impact me.” We've got a lot of different responses to that particular question.

But the real-world context generator will actually give some really interesting thoughts for why some students will need to think about the skills being assessed on the SAT. Not even just thinking about the SAT, but like words in context is an enduring skill. It’s a college readiness skill but it’s also a skill even if you’re not going to college. So let's say I’m going to be working obviously with my 11th graders for the SAT, and I want to know why it’s important to learn words in context.

Let’s say, I don’t know, electricians. This electrician doesn’t want to go to college; why do I need to learn about words in context? We ask KIGO, and KIGO gives us ideas such as understanding technical terms and context is crucial for electricians to follow safety protocols correctly. Electricians often need to read and interpret blueprints and technical diagrams which are filled with industry-specific technology. When diagnosing and repairing electrical issues, electricians must understand the context of technical terms.

So even though that concept of an SAT may be not relatable for some students who don’t have plans to go to college, those skills that are being assessed can be relevant across all students. I think this real world context generator gives a really fun and easy way for students to connect with that and for teachers to help them understand why those concepts are important, even if they don’t have a plan to go to college necessarily.

Alright, I think that was all I wanted to show you unless there’s anything specific that you want to see. But any other questions I can help answer? Now’s the time, y’all. I, Sarah, am the expert, as you could see. Well, at least hopefully some of you newcomers feel like you’ve leveled up to maybe an explorer or a scholar, and your explorers have leveled up.

So hopefully, you got a little bit more context and information about using the courses, and Barbara is here to help you with whatever questions you have as you go along. Danielle, I’m going to kick it back over to you if there aren’t any other questions. Great! So thank you all so much for joining to learn about the SATs. Thank you so much, Sarah, for presenting and sharing all this information.

So again, if you have not signed up for the New Hampshire partnership or to find out more information, or to even send this learning series to more of your educators, I just put our blog in the chat—that’s where we’re driving traffic. Does anyone have any other general questions? And then we'll give you actually 25 minutes of your life back this morning.

Actually, I have a question: if we weren't able to attend the previous sessions, is it possible to get those recordings? Yes! Oh, actually speaking of, let me stop this recording because no one needs to hear—yeah, Katie, I’ve got...