At IXL, we strive to keep our teaching and learning platform in line and up to date with students’ evolving needs. That’s why we compile a list of our top new features to help you—as a learner, educator, or parent—get the most out of IXL.
Keep reading below for a roundup of releases from the past month, including expanded subject areas for Quizzes, Scratchpad for the diagnostic, exact Snapshot data for districts, and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Table of contents
Major releases
Quizzes for science, social studies, and Spanish skills
Teachers can now create quizzes using science, social studies, and Spanish skills! This means teachers can use quizzes to assess their students in any of the subjects on IXL.
Creating a quiz with a science, social studies, or Spanish skill works essentially the same as creating a quiz for math or ELA, with a few small differences for science and social studies. Since skills in these subjects are broken into stages, teachers will select a skill and a stage to generate each question, instead of a skill and the difficulty level.
Due to the comparatively smaller question bank size for science and social studies skills, teachers may be more likely to encounter duplicate questions. If teachers see a duplicate while creating their quiz, they can move on to the next stage, or they can generate a new question.
For students, taking a quiz is the same experience no matter what subject the skills are from.
Teachers can share Quizzes
Teachers can now share copies of their quizzes with other teachers! This will allow teachers to collaborate and create common assessments for students across different classes and even entire grade levels.
On the Manage quizzes page, teachers can share any of their past, draft, or active quizzes using the ‘…’ settings button on their quiz tile. Quizzes can be shared with any teacher in the same school who teaches the same subject area.
Once a quiz is shared, receiving teachers will see a copy of the quiz in their Quiz drafts. They will also receive a teacher notification about it. The receiving teacher can make further edits to their own quiz copy without affecting the original teacher’s version.
Teachers will only see results and analytics for quizzes that they publish. This means teachers receiving a copy can’t see the results of the original quiz, and the teacher that shared a quiz can’t see the results of the shared quiz copies.
Middle school writing and grammar videos
Hot on the heels of our phonics videos release, we are thrilled to announce that we now have ELA videos for middle school as well!
This initial release targets high-impact writing strategies and grammar concepts across grades 6-8 in order to build confident writers. The tutorials provide students with the essential information they need to understand the concepts at hand, then walk students through several clear examples to help cement their understanding and prepare them for the IXL skills. The tutorials also help students understand why these concepts matter and how they can apply them to their own writing.
As usual, these videos can be accessed from the practice page of their associated skills. This initial release includes videos for about a dozen skills in each grade, mostly in the Writing Strategies section. Check out a few examples below!
- Correct errors in everyday use
- Distinguish facts from opinions
- Order topics from broadest ot narrowest
- Correct errors with signs
Feature updates
Scratchpad is now available for the Real-Time Diagnostic
Students can now use Scratchpad while they are working in the IXL Diagnostic! On both the IXL website and in the mobile app, students will be able to use the Scratchpad while answering diagnostic questions. Teachers can also adjust their Scratchpad settings in their Profile and settings page.
The Scratchpad will be available for all IXL editions with the diagnostic. This new feature will be available for both the Snapshot and Real-Time Diagnostic modes but will not affect the universal screener.
Exact data points on Snapshot Growth report for districts
We have added a hover effect over the line graph on the Snapshot Growth report for districts. Administrators can hover over the graph to see the exact data point plotted. This new release will help administrators more precisely track and monitor growth for their districts.
Skill plan updates and new skills
Nebraska NWEA MAP skill plans & personalized study plans
We now offer skill plans for the Nebraska NWEA MAP Growth assessment for both ELA and math! With these plans, users are able to enter their RIT score to access a personalized study plan. These were created in partnership with NWEA and will automatically appear on the skill plan landing page for users from Nebraska. You can check out one of the skill plans here!
New test prep skill plans: Michigan M-STEP and Missouri EOC
We’re releasing new test prep skills plans for Michigan and Missouri!
Skill plans for Michigan M-STEP are now available for Math and ELA in grades 3-7. Missouri EOC skill plans are now available for high school math and ELA, joining our existing skill plans for Missouri’s grades 3-8 assessments. These plans are designed to help students review key concepts in the weeks leading up to the test.
New Reading Intervention skill plan
Our new Reading Intervention skill plan is specifically designed for students of any age who need reading remediation, such as students with dyslexia. This day-by-day plan guides students through the foundational skills they need to start reading successfully—from phonological awareness and letter-sound associations to CVC words, blends and digraphs, and high-frequency words.
This skill plan differs from the Learn to Read skill plan in two important ways:
- It focuses on phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency—in other words, it focuses on the foundational mechanics of reading.
- It is organized by level rather than by grade, so that older students who need remediation won’t be discouraged by working at a lower grade level.
New math skill plans
We’ve added the following math skill plans:
- StemScopes Math Texas Grade 4
- Big Ideas Math FL BEST Grade 6 Accelerated
We’ve also updated the Bridges Grade 2 and Pearson Texas Algebra 2 skill plans to include many skills specifically tailored to each curriculum.
New ELA textbook skill plan
We’ve added an ELA skill plan for CKLA for Grade 1.
We also updated Grade 3 of ReadyGen to showcase our newest skills.
Updates to Learn to Read skill plan
We have updated our Learn to Read skill plan to make it more user-friendly for teachers and more clearly aligned to the Science of Reading:
- Instead of using Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 for the skill plan names, we are now using Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd. This will make it easier for teachers to know which skill plan to use for direct instruction in the classroom.
- We have added a handful of skills to each skill plan to better cover all 5 of the areas that are considered essential for literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.
- We have also updated the sub-headers in the skill plan to more clearly show how we cover the areas listed above.
New math and ELA skills
We’ve released a handful of new math skills for elementary school! The new skills involve topics such as identifying numbers spoken aloud, comparing numbers with place value, and multiplying with area models. Note that—as we often do!—we’ve created a few versions of the comparing skill with different sets of numbers to specifically target Common Core and Texas state standards.
We’ve also added a few new skills for ELA. The grade 3 skills identify syllable types and read multisyllabic words teach students how to break large words into syllables and read them. In the grade 6 skill draw inferences from literary texts, students read short literary passages that are designed to mimic the experience of reading from an engaging young adult novel. Students first make an inference based on the story details, then they are asked to identify details from the text that best supports this inference.
Additional releases
Australia edition skill plans
We have added skill plans to IXL’s Australia edition! Building on the success of skill plans in the US, Canada, and UK editions, our Australian skill plans perfectly align IXL skills to local curriculum and test prep needs.
You can find skill plans for textbook, state curriculum (standards), and test prep aligned to:
- National Assessment Program (NAPLAN) for math and ELA
- Curriculum for each state and territory
- Essential Mathematics textbook
As in the US edition, Australian skill plans can be found under the Learning tab and are pinnable. Check out these new skill plans here.
New math video tutorials
We’ve released 14 new Grade 3 math videos and 16 new Geometry videos to expand our coverage in those grades! These videos cover topics such as fractions of number lines: unit fractions and ASA and AAS Theorems.
The post What’s new on IXL – February 2023 appeared first on IXL Official Blog.