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