- Hey, everyone, this is Jeremy Schifeling 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 Madelyn,
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 Madelyn lays out the key points she wants
to share with you about using Khan Academy
in your classroom, she'll take your questions live.
So share and view the questions format and here we go.
So Madelyn, welcome, thank you so much
for joining us today.
- Absolutely, thank you so much.
- We're super excited to have you here.
And 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, 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.
So I got started mainly using it for math
and that's how I do my math homework 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 use the computer programming
and I also use history.
- Very cool, okay,
it sounds like you're a Khan Academy super user.
So that's perfect.
That's what we need.
And so for those who wanna aspire for super user status
that 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 explore what those have to offer.
I think the ELA beta is really awesome to be able to use
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.
So basically we just added a new class.
And out of curiosity, 'cause I know this always comes up,
how do you 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 student's 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, which is really interesting to me.
Don't skip it, download it so that you would have that
on your computer.
I mean, you can access it other ways,
but that's gonna be the easiest.
- Great, and so once someone has created their class
and they've applied all those different courses
that you were talking about, how would you even get started?
How would you get a student using ELA on Khan Academy
for the first time?
- So what you're gonna wanna do is first you're gonna wanna
assign something so that when the students get
into Khan Academy there is something for them to do.
And so I teach third grade.
So I would go into the third grade beta
and then just click on a unit.
So right now, I've been doing a lot
of actually the vocabulary 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.
'Cause if this is new to them,
they're gonna feel more comfortable if,
oh, okay, I know what context clues are,
okay, and 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 assigned them something on there,
even though my students are comfortable with it.
- And here's an example
of what some of those questions look like.
Now, imagine that someone is going to start Khan Academy
for the first time not having that prior experience
in the classroom with it.
Would you recommend rolling this out
over a Zoom conversation or a 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.
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 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, through a share screen
so that they can see what it looks like.
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 you can do that in your live Hangout.
You could have each of the kids write down the answer
they think is the correct one and hold it up.
And then they were doing it together
and they're getting a tutorial of how to use it.
- Very cool, and so when you're ready to go to prime time
and say, okay, I wanna make this part
of my regular classroom fabric
such as our classrooms exist today,
how would you?
How would you make it easy and regular for your students?
- 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 Classrooms.
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 now is the time
that you're gonna get onto Khan Academy.
I want you to do the assignment that's named such-and-such.
And so just building it in that way would be what I suggest.
- Very cool and I'll just mention that every piece
of content on Khan Academy has a unique URL.
So if you ever just need to paste a link to a video
or to a specific exercise, you can do that.
Or into a 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, does it matter?
- So I am not doing grades.
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 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 kiddos 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.
I mean, he had spend six minutes on two assignments,
which is just not enough time for the 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,
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've 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 it's totally fine.
If you have to wait until later to get it done, that's fine.
There's no stress to get this done right away.
- Very cool,
so I love how you closed the feedback loop there.
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 it's so hard
in this remote learning environment,
but you're still closing that loop using Khan Academy
to generate the data, super cool.
So the questions are starting to pour in.
If you're good Madelyn, I'd love to bring up a question
from Don and Herb and Kelly, which is what is an ELA beta?
What does that even mean?
How should we be thinking about that?
- So basically Khan Academy,
and you can talk to this probably much better,
but 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.
- Absolutely.
- But so right now, there's multiple topics
that you can choose from.
So there's reading passages.
There's non-fiction and fiction
and then there's also just specific skills
like I talked about with the vocabulary
like using glossaries and dictionaries and things like that.
So I'm super excited about it.
- Cool, and I just shared the link with everyone.
If you wanna use it and give us feedback, please just use
that link and let us know 'cause our content developers
are really eager for that kind of information,
speaking of feedback loops.
Let's see here.
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 instruction.
I already have my students working through Google Classroom.
Are there any special tips you would offer
for Google Classroom users given that you 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 does syncing look like?
What does that actually do for the teacher
or for the students?
- So then it just makes it...
I wish that I could...
- I don't think you have to share your screen
'cause I know you've got
your students' personal information on there.
We've got our fabricated data here.
- Yeah, so then it just shares the information.
- Yeah, I thought the easiest way to explain it is
if you've already done the hard work of getting students
onto Google Classroom and everyone's 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 don't have to double work
because it's all being fed over.
- And I know there's been a lot of concern
about 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.
- Oh, I got a really juicy question for you from Kathleen.
I love this question.
I know it's very tempting in the middle of this crisis
to be totally focused on just getting through the day.
I am certainly 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 can benefit from understanding
what they've done so far?
- Oh, that's an awesome question.
Well, it depends on hopefully your students are signing up
with their school email
or just using the same login,
then my understanding is that it should.
I haven't followed the same group of students
and I was teaching at an older grade,
but from what my students have told me, it follows them.
Do you have more on that?
- Absolutely, no, 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 saying, hey, I love all this stuff
for third through 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 those 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 wanna change what that looks like
and you might want to...
There's unit tests for each thing.
So if we go to sentence and clauses or if we go to nouns,
then there's gonna be a unit test.
So it might just look different
where you would find that at the beginning.
And see how they do on that and then figure out
what individual skills you wanna go over,
instead of assigning every single assignment.
- I love that and actually you echoed exactly
what Tim Vandenberg, your fellow ambassador had shared
a couple weeks ago, which is even for his sixth graders,
he has them go back and actually master each of these things
because if they didn't learn about nouns in the first grade,
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 this really speaks probably
to the elementary population that you're most familiar with.
Marta wants to know if I've already created
the students' 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?
- So I've never had to do it with distance learning,
so that's a great question.
What I would do is...
Again, each school looks different right now.
We're having to send out a weekly email to parents
and so you could input it within that.
And then so that's probably what I would do
is just screenshot the user,
each individual username and you could do that.
Oh, perfect.
- Yeah, I was gonna add, I think you're absolutely right.
Totally the best way to do it or whatever's natural
for your communication style, if you're 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, Madelyn.
Okay, hopefully that gets you started, Marta.
I know it's a tough thing to do midstream, especially given
that the stream we're wading in right now is very deep.
Ooh, here's a really interesting question.
This is 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 less 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,
even 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 themselves computer programming and biology
and started going through those lessons.
And so absolutely, this would be great
for self-paced instruction.
- Very cool and just to make that really lucid,
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, older learners
who are 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 question, Shelly.
Great response, Madelyn.
Ooh, here's a tough one.
So Krista says when setting this 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.
- So again it's gonna 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.
And so 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 student has autism,
he did not like the Khan Academy videos,
but he loved the activity and doing the assignment on there.
He just prefers getting the instruction from me.
So there's gonna be give and take
and just I guess having that conversation with them
about what's working with us and what's not
and teachers were really flexible.
So just keeping that flexibility with this as well.
- Very cool, great feedback.
Actually very similar, Caesar 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?
- So I do have some students
that are English language learners.
So you can actually turn on captions.
And so I will do that with the videos
because sometimes they'll miss something
or they will think that two words is 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 sometimes
where I might use just a little bit simpler level
so that they can access it easier.
- Great advice, Madelyn.
That leads to a bigger question.
Can you speak to the idea of differentiation
on Khan Academy a bit more broadly?
When we did our initial demo, we were mostly talking
about lock step, everyone gets the same assignment.
If you wanted to serve each student where they are,
how would you go about doing that?
- There's so many different ways to do that.
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 assign 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 if you're doing math,
there's very clear cut if you need remediation
in third grade, click here,
if you need supports for this, click here.
And then with ELA, it's not there yet 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.
Assign them a fourth grade or a fifth grade
or go the other way.
- Cool, and just to 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.
So you can really make sure
that every student is getting what they need,
not just whatever the class is getting.
Speaking of getting what you need,
Nathan, a parent, actually asks a really important question,
which is 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 wanna just skip
to third grade and start her on that ELA beta.
Do you recommend anything to get started
at that second grade level?
- Well, so I would suggest doing some
of the grammar lessons.
That would be really good.
There's some pretty basic things in there like nouns,
singular nouns, things like that.
So I would do that I would think.
And then I don't think there's any harm
with doing what beta is available for second grade
and fill in the time with that for now.
- Yeah, have you ever used Khan Kids
with your students at all, Madelyn?
- Well, not with my students, but I have two little ones
and with my three-year-old, he uses Khan Academy.
He's not going to preschool anymore
which was pretty devastating for him
and so he uses Khan Academy Kids and he loves it.
And he was really excited because that is continuing
to develop and so recently there was assignments
for first grade that came up
and he was so excited about new videos.
So it's a great tool.
It's an app that 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, as all three, all along the bottom,
these app stores as you can see on the screen.
And in some ways, it's easier to get started with especially
in this remote learning environment, 'cause like you said,
Madelyn, you just start it and it just goes
and you don't have to worry about all these assignments
and everything else.
So could be a nice way
for the early elementary educators out there
to get their students started.
- And you can still get reports.
- Right, Sara from Guilford County, North Carolina asks
and this is a very important question,
can you actually preview the lesson and videos
before you assign them
or are you basically just shooting in the dark
and hoping for the best?
- No, you can absolutely preview anything.
I typically do the assignment myself.
Now, there's sometimes with some of the assignments,
there's 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 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 students.
- 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 to your own classroom.
And that way, you actually have the ability
to see every email, every notification, everything
that your students are about to get.
And all you have to do is come in here
to your classroom dashboard, go to the class code
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 that the student sees through their eyes.
Have you ever done that, Madelyn?
Has that ever-- - Mm-hmm.
Okay, cool, cool.
- And then also I just add courses that I'm interested in.
So I think I have astronomy in there right now.
And so I show the kids this is something I'm excited about,
I'm gonna be learning.
And so then they feel like you're using this, too.
You're a learner, too and it builds that connection, too.
- I love that.
Any tips, speaking of that, about just growth mindset,
especially this moment when we feel like so deflated
and we're like I don't even wanna think about tomorrow.
How do you keep your students feeling really strong
and persistent right now?
- That's a good question.
Just keeping things light.
At the beginning of each academic year,
I do gross mindset lessons with them through Khan Academy,
a course that they have available that's nice
to help kids get into that mindset.
But I think just continuing the connection with your kids
is so important in whatever way you can.
- Very 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 wanna 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,
hey, who's run into this?
Or hey, 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 just have to ask for access.
- Very cool, and then lastly,
as we face the tough month ahead of us
and maybe even a little more, any words of wisdom
that you wanna 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 Madelyn, thank you so much for being with us today.
You learn 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 months ahead.
- Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.
- Have a great day, all.