Khan Academy Best Practices for Middle School

Hey everyone, this is Jeremy Shifling with Khan Academy. Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. Um, you're in for a very special treat today because we have Khan Academy ambassador and all-star middle teacher Shalom with us today, um, who's been using Khan Academy for almost a decade. Basically, since Khan, um, Sal Khan himself started making the videos, Shalom has been with us using it in his classroom. So if you're ever curious about how do you get started with Khan Academy for remote learning, how do you specialize and target your content for your middle school students, Shalom is the person to speak to and he's happy to share his expertise today.

So that being said, before we get Shalom's background here, I want to remind you that the first part of the session will be focused on the most common questions we received and Shalom will talk through how to get started and how to focus your energies with Khan Academy. Then we'll open it up for the final half for questions from the audience. So if you ever want to ask a question, just go to the questions section of the GoToWebinar control panel and we'll take those in the order they're received.

So Shalom, welcome and thank you so much for joining us today. It's uh, very nice to be here with everybody and just to sort of give folks a sense of where you're coming from. Tell us a little bit about where you teach, who you teach, and what your experience with Khan has been.

Okay, I'm a seventh-grade math teacher in Ocean Township, New Jersey. Teaching is a second career for me; I actually worked on Wall Street for six years and decided to make a switch. I've been teaching middle school ever since, so here I am in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

Very cool! So tell us, like, even before this crisis started, why have you been a Khan user in your classroom?

At about the 2010-2011 school year, a friend of mine had told me about it, and I had heard about this Khan Academy videos thing, but she told me, "Oh no, no, it has exercises." So I was really drawn to the exercises. Back then they had to get either seven in a row or ten in a row right to level up, and I was like, "This is how we learn everything!" So I primarily—I didn't have computers back then—I used it initially for extra credit, but I continue to use it to this day. It's my primary source of practice problems for students. I use others, but it's my primary source.

And what, you know, I love the fact that students can go at their own pace. They're not—it really allows them to learn what they want at their own level, um, and it provides such good data for me as a teacher to decide when to intervene, what to intervene, what trends there are, things like that.

Very cool! So obviously, you could probably give an entire three-hour lecture on how to set up Khan Academy during normal times.

I really could!

The times we live in are very abnormal. All of a sudden, if you are an educator out there, a middle school teacher who is struggling to get started with remote learning basically yesterday and their district is saying, "Hey, you've got to roll something out for your students," obviously, number one, our hearts go out to you. But number two, what kind of, like, really concrete tips would you give to that educator who wants to get started immediately?

Okay, um, first of all, I'm very fortunate. My students are conditioned on how to use Khan Academy, so there's a—and I know it's scary to, "Oh my God, how am I going to start with something new?" So my recommendation is to go through some exercises as a student. You know, answer them yourself, but make sure they are review exercises. Start with something you know that the kids would know. Start small. Assign a few skills for them and then just at that point, dive in, meaning you assign it to them. You tell them, "Here, go do this by Friday," and let them work.

Then take a look at the data that comes in—take a look at what students are working on. Um, are they, uh, getting them correct? Are they not? Um, so you want to start small because you don't want to overwhelm the kids with a bunch of stuff, which is why I think for right now it would be good to start with review. Uh, but then once you get started, make sure to look at all the reports, try to understand it. You know, I know it's so hard to see the forest through the trees, um, but that would be my big piece of advice.

And here's where I'm gonna give you a shout out, Jeremy. A few weeks ago you did a workshop and you talked about adding—he goes, "Why don't you add yourself as a coach to your own account?" And I think that was actually something I had never thought to do, you know, considering the amount of time I've spent using Khan. By doing that, I started seeing the same report notifications that the students would see. You know, "Here's something your teacher assigned you." I started getting email notifications. So you, you kind of, by adding yourself as a coach to your own learner side of the account—because every account can be a learner and a coach account—it really kind of helped me understand. I already kind of knew what they saw, but it really let me kind of put it in my face to see what the students are seeing when I assign them things.

Very cool! So just to recap those three main steps. Sounds like number one just start searching around Khan Academy, playing the role of a student. What does it feel like to look at a video? What does it feel like to do an exercise? Get some hints. Once you see one that you're really excited about, maybe just start by assigning a single assignment at a time just to sort of dip your toes into the water and get your students feeling comfortable. And then to really understand what it looks like from the student lens, come down to your student section, get your class code, and then under your learner home, you can find the section called teachers at the very bottom and add yourself to your own classroom. You'll now see those notifications that Shalom talked about so you understand exactly what it feels like to be in your student shoes.

Yeah, and the other thing too is in this, um, the time that we're in, the videos, you know, tend to take a little longer. I would just start at first with the exercises. Um, you know, this is just practical advice, um, so that you can quickly see, "Oh, is this something I'd want my students doing?"

And if it is, right at the top of the screen, if you pick an exercise, right now, can you just pick one and show everybody how they can assign it to their students right from the top of the screen?

Yeah, tell me like a common skill you might be teaching in your classroom right now, Shalom, if we were back in school.

Um, well, this time of year, um, I'm doing some geometry with my advanced class. So if you go to seventh grade geometry, so let's just go to area of a circle—the second one there. So click the practice button. See, this is—you're in the student view—the students have to answer seven questions, and you say, "Wait a minute! I really like this question up here." So at the top there's "Assigned to." All right, you can assign it to multiple classes, you can assign it to individual students as long as it's for one class only. If you have multiple classes, it's going to assign it to every student in the class.

Um, I prefer to do different questions, or you can also assign the same questions to everybody—different questions, the way I go. And then you can set a due date. Now this will come up on their, um, learner dashboard, uh, but this right here will not come up on Google Classroom. That's something teachers, I know you can link your class to Google Classrooms to get your roster, um, into Khan Academy, but assignments don't automatically go out to Google Classroom. And I'm hoping that they are working on changing that in the future.

Yeah, I'll just mention on that point, if you ever have feedback for us about something you'd love to see in the product, just go right up to your name in the upper right-hand corner, click the help button, and then come to the section called report a problem and say, "Hey, I've got a really great feature idea that would make things much, much better." I'll actually paste this in to the chat section so you can let us know if you have problems or ideas you want us to consider.

Okay, so that is, um, sort of getting started with checking it out! What are some of the challenges that you anticipate that teachers will face in the next few weeks, Shalom? I know we have a lot of things on our shoulders right now, but if you think about Khan Academy in particular, where do you see new teachers run into issues and how can they sort of preempt those best they can?

Okay, my biggest challenge with Khan Academy has always been getting students to buy into the growth mindset aspect of it. You know, it’s not just, “Here's five problems, do them. Great! You got four wrong, let's move on to the next topic.” It's really designed to have the kids work until they show levels of proficiency. So, um, two things that I make all my students and parents do at the beginning of the year is I make them watch the "You Can Learn Anything" video, and also, there's about a five or six-minute or so TED talk by Angela Lee Duckworth on grit.

Um, so it's kind of to get them set. And by the way, she talks about how she was a seventh grade teacher and how, um, you know, perseverance and all these things to get students in the mindset of you're not gonna get everything right. Um, you're gonna make mistakes along the way and that it's okay as long as you keep going. Those are the two things I think that are the biggest challenges that I've had. You know, and I've had some tough times, especially in my earlier years with, with, you know, parents complaining about how frustrated their child is. But since I've started doing that, I've gotten much better appreciation from the parents and from the students that struggling is okay.

I always say, "Why is it okay to be terrible when you first play an instrument?" I mean, you don't, you don't see somebody pick up the flute and they're playing it and they sound great—they sound awful, right? And why is it not acceptable in math to be bad at something at first? So that's my, uh, first thing.

Um, also, another challenge is the amount of content can be overwhelming—it really, really can. But thankfully, everything, if you click on courses there for me, Jeremy, right? You guys, um, you will see the courses are aligned with the Common Core standards, which, you know, um, by grade. So if you go down, I'm looking at your screen right now—first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade—so you can go in there and find the exercises by standard.

There's also a Common Core map, which, um, is, I think it's okay, it's great for high school teachers, but K-8, the standards are really well aligned by grade. Um, so you can—or you can—there's the Common Core map; you know, it shows grade one, there's 28 unique skills and 605 questions, and so on and so forth.

Um, this is a different view, but I prefer the other view where you go into the grade itself, but I know it's overwhelming to see all that information. But if you narrow it down, find exercises you like, try them out, and assign them to your students, and then just see where it goes from there.

Great, great advice! So really sort of start with a little bit of inspiration, setting the bar high, letting your students, you know, know that you believe in them even when the challenge is so strong right now. And then number two, finding the stuff that really brings them back to that sense of normalcy of like, “Hey, we would have been covering this right now, and so we're going to keep going ahead and not give up.”

Last question before we opened up for more questions from the audience is if you think a couple weeks ahead, you know, the teachers have taken your advice for getting started, they've made a couple of assignments, and now maybe the pressure is really on to deliver kind of classroom-like instruction on a regular basis and really take the most of tools of Khan Academy. Are there any more advanced tips or techniques from your middle school experience that you would recommend for a middle school educator out there?

I'm sorry, I was coughing there. Um, you know, I think that—can you repeat the end of that question because I coughed at the end?

Oh no, no. Yeah, just thinking ahead! Like, I know personally, in my kid's own district here, there's a lot of discussion right now about going from pure, sort of like keep the lights on day in and day out to how do we actually have, you know, clear plans, clear structures in place to mimic as much classroom instruction as possible. If a teacher is facing that kind of challenge over the next few weeks or months, like what can they do on Khan Academy to go above and beyond just one assignment? What turns it into a system, into a process?

Okay, um, first of all, if this is tough for people to wrap their heads around, but if you are okay—with students working at their own pace, right? If you have them start to work through a unit—can you pull up, before the session started, we talked about the, uh, the mastery point system?

Okay, so, um, that's kind of small on my screen. I don't know if I would look on other people's screens, but okay, perfect! Zero points means a student—so this is all has to do with exercise sets—so zero points means either a student has, I'm trying to point my mouse but I'm guessing they either have never started it, no level, or they've attempted it. If you see the little diamond in the bottom right corner, that means they've gotten less than 70% on that problem set. Then if the student gets at least 70 percent, they get to 50 points, which is familiar. And then if they get 100 in that problem set, they get 80 points and they're proficient, right?

And the last 20 points they can get mastered. They have to do one of two ways: either by taking a unit test on Khan Academy or by answering them correctly on what's called the mastery challenge. All right? If you say to the students, "Um, let's pick a—let's go to geometry or seventh grade anything," and you ask the students, "Okay, you know what? Start at the beginning," by the way, I wouldn't necessarily start with geometry.

It's not the, uh, let's do negative numbers—addition, subtraction—here, let's use that and say to the students, "All right, get started!" All right, if you go down, you're gonna have to scroll to the—there's the first skill: signs of sums. They're not actually—they're gonna see instead of, uh, mastered, they're gonna see a little blue button there that says "start," and that's how they can get to the exercise and then say, "Okay, go from there to the next one: adding negative numbers," right? And the points system that I just discussed is on the right side there.

Now, your account or whoever's account this is has already mastered all those, so it's kind of, um, not the best example because, you know, uh, this person already mastered all these, but if you have the students start at the first skill in negative numbers and work their way through and say, "Listen, I just want you to work 30 minutes a day and try to, you know, watch videos, do exercises, see how you do," and you use that point system in the reporting that you get as well. And that point system helps you determine what it is that students need more help with.

Do you want to talk very briefly about these progress reports just because I think that'll help folks really draw the connection between what the students are seeing and doing and what the teacher is responding with?

Okay, so let's go to, um, solving equations and inequalities. So if you click on that, right? And you scroll down a little bit—all right, not started, right now there are eight students that are not started and that's their names right there. That's the zero points? Attempted? There's one student that's—um attempted means they got less than 70 percent familiar. We have no students in that category, so those are students that have 70 percent but less than 100 percent proficient is a student that did the exercise and they got all the questions right, so they got 100 percent, they moved to proficient and, uh, looks like Megan, um, she eventually answered the question correct on a unit test or did a mastery challenge and she got those last 20 points, and that's where she gets the, um, the mastered.

So the point system that I talked about before is related—it—that's on the student side, what they can see. This is on the teacher side, what you can see. So if you ask your students to start on a unit and just say, "Just go with it, here. Take, take whatever minutes a day and go with it," you'll start getting this report to populate and you'll see who's getting it and who's not.

Um, and that, this is what I do in my class during the regular year. I know it's kind of tough to do that or to even think about doing that in this time, but this is actually the most meaningful part of the website for me, uh, is that students are working at their own pace, and I tell the kids just because you know, um, you're struggling with something or your friend is struggling with something but you're not, why should I give you homework on the same topic every day?

Um, so this might be the perfect test case for doing something like that.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to find silver linings right now, but if ever there was a moment in American education when we could actually try to serve each student where they are, this might be that one with tools like this. Listen, ideally, I'd be working below grade level and having my kids work their way up, um, but you know, I'm still responsible for grade-level assessments and grades and things like that. So this is a time where a lot of people can kind of experiment with, "Hey, you know what? I think this is the best way my students can learn, and let me just try it."

So cool! Well, amazing, amazing advice, Shalom. I think you've been on folks a lot to get started with already! Let's dive into the more specific questions coming from the audience, starting with a great one from Janus. So Janice is talking a little bit about the experience that students have of doing these exercises and she says, "What strategy, Shalom, have you found effective in getting kids to self-help by using those hint resources and going back to rework and redo their exercises to improve their understanding?"

One thing I’ve seen a lot observing middle school students is kids don't want to use hints because it seems like a sign of weakness. They don't want to do it again because it seems like, "Oh, maybe they didn't do so well the first time." How do you overcome that and get them to help themselves?

Well, I'll answer it in two ways. Number one, in class, I have a rule: I won't answer your question unless you've attempted the problem. And I tell the kids, even if you guessed—even if it's a multiple-choice question and you guessed correctly—then raise your hand and say, "Mr. Lab, I guessed this right, but can you explain it to me?" So we are almost kind of forcing that hand now because we're not right there to help them.

So my whole thing is encourage, and this is where the growth mindset comes in. This is where, you know, it's okay—like I always use this example with my students. Um, my son was eight years old, taught himself to solve a Rubik's Cube and made fun of me because I couldn't do it, and then I had to learn how to do it! I mean, I couldn't let him, you know, beat me. And when I did, um, it took me a lot longer to learn it than it took him.

So I used that as a growth mindset lesson. I didn't give up! Am I stupid because it took me longer than him? Maybe! But I think most people would say, "Wow, you're a person who can solve a Rubik's Cube now!" Um, and it doesn't matter if it takes you longer. And that's the kind of thing that I think if you can get your students to understand. That's why I like those two videos, the "You Can Learn Anything" and the grit videos, because it kind of gets kids in that mindset.

So great question! Harder to do than, you know, than just saying, "Go ahead and do this!" But, uh, good luck Janice!

Right! Yeah, all right, great question, Janice! A great response, Shalom!

Um, coordinator, I think it's gonna push us to go back a little bit. This is important for those who are just really getting started today. What's even required for a middle school student to get started with a Khan Academy? Is all they need an email? How do they even get sort of integrated into the system in the first place?

Okay, the first of all, if the students—if your district has a G Suite or Gmail email handle, that makes it easy right there. Because all you need to do is, when you go to—excuse me—when you go to settings, are we in teacher tools? I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah!

Okay, sync with Google Classroom! Yeah, right there! Sync with Google Classroom. I didn't know if it was in the teacher setting or the—and you just—this account's already synced with her Google Class—this is Megan's account, right?

So hit sync, and now that roster will be in there. Now if you don't have, um, a Google Suite email address in your district, there's the class code. Now the students—I always prefer they do things with their district email address—but you can send them this class code and they add themselves to your class.

The one thing I always stress is when students log in, if it is a Google account, make sure to log in through Google. A lot of times, people see the login screen and they see, um, an actual, like, place to enter a username and password. You don't need it if it's a Google account; you just link it to your Google, you know, account.

And let me actually show what that looks like from the, um, the new user standpoint, so, yeah, you were coming to Khan Academy as a student and you said, "Start here!" Said, "Hey, I'm a learner!" Just to be clear, your recommendation is better to put in a class code than anything else, Shalom, is that right?

Um, well, no, my—if you're Google, I would start right there. Continue with Google!

Google!

Cool, yeah, do me a favor. It clicks there—is it going to ask for the date of birth anymore? Is that going to just—

Yeah, so I believe it offers that based on the fact that this person is over 13. Um, but yeah, you can also do Google or you can do class code, um, which again is pulled straight from your classroom settings.

Okay, great feedback! Correct me if I'm wrong, but the age shouldn't be an issue if you're using it with a school account—that's one of the reasons I also recommend using a school account—because that's exactly right!

Okay, okay! Great question coordinating! Thanks for the response to Shalom; I hope I answered it!

Gerard from Ocean Township says, "Shalom, where did you get that awesome headset?"

Gerard is messing with me! Gerard is my supervisor, so uh-oh! Yes! Okay, better be on your best behavior! This is my Cessna pilot headset! That's pretty funny, Gerard! I’m giving you props for asking that question!

[Laughter]

I think we're all in the market for headsets all of a sudden, so, uh, definitely, if you have a recommendation alone, let us know!

Um, so Belinda has a really good question which is, okay, we've talked a lot about the technology, but what about the sort of teacher-student interaction piece? How would you recommend giving feedback to students once you start getting these progress reports?

Okay, first of all, in terms of feedback, the students are getting immediate feedback if they answer a question right or wrong. Yes, the hints are not the most exciting for them to look at, you know, but it is instant feedback. And you know, I've been doing it for years and I’m trying, I try to get my students to read the hints. Please see if you then ask me the question. And, you know, sometimes they wear you down. Sometimes I—they ask me a question; I don't even ask them, "Did you look at the hints yet?"

Um, you know, some exercises I don't necessarily love the hints. I think that—it's not that they're wrong—I just don't think that they're the most, uh, you know, uh, simplified way of showing things!

So it's the—the feedback in the classroom is I can use that data to kind of pick a group of students. Wow, these seven kids are struggling with this skill. Let me work with them! Um, use that to maybe do a Zoom conference with a small group of kids. I bought myself this right here; it's a little tablet that I can use to write, and I make Sal Khan-style videos myself as kids ask me questions.

Um, you can make those. Um, if you look at there’s a certain report you can look at and see how many students in the class answered it correctly or incorrectly, and Khan actually, uh, puts it in order from the most difficult to the, um, I'm sorry, the one that's most frequently wrong to, uh, you know, the ones that have been easiest.

So if you—let's pull that up real quick! So if you see a problem, you’re like, "Wow, a lot of kids are getting this wrong," and you want to do a quick video for it in this—in, you know, in class, you would obviously do it.

Here's a cl—here's a question. Only three students were presented with it. Question seven—uh, two of the students got it wrong, one student got it right. My favorite part is to the right. Um, it shows you what answers were chosen and by the way, um, this is a multiple choice question. If you can find one that is not multiple choice, I think everything in this set is multiple choice, but you can even—if the question is not multiple choice, it will tell you what students typed in as their answer.

So this kind of information is fantastic and you can use it, um, as you please. Now, in the, you know, the setting that we're in, remote learning, it's not—it’s not going to be easy and you have to find your way of conveying that to your students, whether it be videos or or webinar chat style things—video chats, I should say—but the information is there to help you make those decisions, and that's, that's the beauty. That's what I love about Khan Academy the most—it really helps me.

By the way, I have to give a shout out to my co-teacher Suzy because Gerard got mentioned, so share the love far and wide!

Um, yeah, no, I think—you just nailed though, I want to really echo that last sentiment which is I think a lot of teachers will look at Khan Academy and say, "Uh, this is just trying to replace the teacher somehow, just like put my classroom on autopilot." It couldn't be farther from the truth because really this is a tool, and the teachers who are using the best are the ones who are using it to drive their own teaching—to get more information to serve their students better.

And if there's something I want everybody to know is—and I've given presentations about Khan Academy and how to use it—and one of the things I always say to people when I present is don't necessarily use it the way I do, okay? Take what I do and make it your own! You know, here's how I do it, I'm not saying it's right, by the way. I'm not saying I've got it figured out because there are changes I make with Suzy. By the way, Suzy and I are big Khan Academy users. Uh, we get together and talk all the time, "I liked how we did this, maybe we should do that instead."

So, um, make it your own. Make it something that you can use the information on there to help you be a better teacher. It is not there to teach your students for you.

Now, the videos in a time like this, yeah, they might be there to teach your students because you can't be there 24/7. Um, and it's great, you know, to be able to rewind and pause and, you know, Sal Khan in one of his TED talks talks about how his cousin said they like him better in his videos than in person, and he kind of said, you know, once you get past the backhanded nature of that comment, he goes, they don't feel like they're bothering the video of me because they can pause, they can rewind, they can do things.

So it is just another tool! Um, for me, my—the way I use it, you hear me, I talk about the exercises and I want it to be that the students, um, use the exercises, sorry, use the exercise data to decide what it is my students need.

Cool! And let me actually ask you one final question here, Shalom, before we wrap, um, tying into this question of like looking at student scores, figuring out what they need. I know that a lot of the pressure is off for this year in terms of state assessments, but if we want to continue to use assessments just to keep track of how students are doing, are there any recommendations you have—this is a question from Kelly, by the way—to use Khan Academy to inform the assessments you're doing?

You know, I—I—we talked about this before, I don't have a great answer to that, um, because the Khan Academy assessments are really not, to me, they're not—they're not summative assessments; they're formative. So I look at it not as like, "Okay, here's a one-time assessment and let's see what the kids know." I look at it more as an ongoing set of data for me: we're working on negative numbers, addition and subtraction. And, oh by the way, a bunch of my kids are struggling with absolute value to find distance—it happens all the time—that's a very difficult skill, right?

So I use it on an ongoing basis to make formative assessment decisions as I teach. I don't really think that it is a good assessment tool—not that it's a bad, but it's not necessarily designed to be an assessment tool that like at the end of or middle of the year let's give the kids this—okay, now I know what they need to, you know, let's focus more on this or that. It's more of an ongoing assessment tool, if that makes sense.

Absolutely, because students are constantly getting feedback on how they're doing, you're receiving those same reports on your side—use that to empower your students, empower you as an educator, not to be the final word about how your students did.

Um, speaking of final words, any final words of wisdom, Shalom, as American educators head out for another big week of, uh, preparation next week?

Other than, um, you know, don't be jealous of the headset. Now, I understand that I know you're frustrated right now, and I know the last thing you need is somebody saying, "Hey, you should use this, hey you should use that!" You know, every website out there is like, "Yeah, we're giving this for free now, and this is for free!" right? But they're gonna go, and when this is all said and done, they're gonna go and say, "Hey, remember that thing we gave you for free? It's gonna go away now; your district or you're gonna have to pay for it!"

And it’s gimmicky. Khan Academy, if there's one thing about it, it is not a gimmick. It is based on research. Mastery-based learning, I think, is the way to truly—it’s the way we learn! Everything, we learn how to ride a bike, we learn how to play an instrument, we learn how to do everything by practicing until we're good at it, and this is the kind of thing that I know it's hard to think of like, "Oh my God, I'm going to dive into something now." But if you do, um, you're going to see the benefits of it.

And you might not use it anything like I do; it might be completely different for you. All right? I don’t expect people to do it the way I do it, but you dive into it. Like I said, give the kids a few exercises, see where the data takes you, see where the information you get takes you.

So I wish everybody good luck and make sure to join the teachers’ page. I don’t know if I said that before on Facebook, you know, um, Teach or Khan Academy teachers page or Teach with Khan. Um, there's a lot of ambassadors and just otherwise, experienced Khan Academy teachers on there that, um, are gonna—they're happy to answer your questions because they've been in the same position as you. They've been at the point where they didn't understand something. So, you know, go on there, ask some questions!

That's amazing! All right, well, I will include that in the chat section. Um, as mentioned before, if we didn't get to your question today, my apologies. Um, please just submit it right here, which I've shared through the chat line, to get help within a few hours from our amazing customer support team.

And then finally, a huge shout out to Shalom for sharing his expertise today. I know it's a lot on our shoulders at the moment, but I feel like you've eased our burden a little bit and given us reason to be confident about the future, so thank you, Shalom!

Thank you for having me, and good luck, everybody! Have a great one!

Everyone!