What’s new on IXL – March 2023

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 K-1 science and social studies coverage, the ability to add students to active quizzes, a more informative district dashboard, and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Major releases

IXL Science & IXL Social Studies for kindergarten and first grade

We’ve added science and social studies curriculum for kindergarten and first grade! With this release, IXL now provides a comprehensive curriculum in kindergarten through 8th grade across all four core subjects: math, English language arts, science, and social studies.

The new K-1 IXL Science skills cover physical science, Earth science, and life science, as well as key concepts about the nature of science and engineering design. Students will learn about the properties of objects, the survival needs of living things, weather patterns, and more!
The new K-1 IXL Social Studies skills focus on communities, civics, geography, economics, and history, covering key content knowledge while building social studies vocabulary and analysis skills. Students will learn about jobs in their communities, the role of rules and laws, how the past compares to the present, and more!

Learn more about the new skills here. We’re working to add state standards skill plans for these new grade levels, and they’re currently available for 20 states. Check out one of the new skill plans here, and stay tuned for more in the coming months!

Feature updates

Add students to an active quiz

We’ve updated IXL Quizzes to allow teachers to add additional students to an active quiz! This feature gives teachers flexibility in case they forgot to add a student to a quiz before publishing, or want to add an absent student to the quiz after it’s been administered to the class.

To add students, click the “…” menu on an active quiz. Students that can be added to the quiz will have an outlined star by their names. Once a student has been added, they cannot be removed or unassigned from the quiz. Previously added students will have a pale yellow, unclickable star next to their names. Results and analytics for these additional students appear in the same report as for the original set of students.

Updated District Dashboard

We’ve updated the IXL District Dashboard to make it easier to see all of your assessment data in one place, and dive into the reports that will be most helpful.

Administrator Dashboards now include new widgets for assessment data including Snapshot Growth, Universal Screener levels, Diagnostic Tier Analysis, and Diagnostic Strands. Clicking on each widget will bring you to the full report to view your assessment data.

The dashboard has also been organized into three sections—Engagement, Skill performance, and Assessment—to align with the navigation bar in District Analytics.

Check out your new District Dashboard here.

In-skill recommendations for iPhone and iPad

In-skill recommendations are now available on the IXL apps for iPad and iPhone! Just like on IXL.com, these in-skill recommendations help learners fill knowledge gaps and find the best skills to work on next.

On the IXL iPhone and iPad apps, learners can now see in-skill recommendations by tapping the blue button to the right of the “Submit” button, which will either say “Not ready yet?” or “Next up” depending on the student’s progress within the skill.

If students need help while practicing, they can tap “Not ready yet?” to receive recommendations for skills that address relevant knowledge gaps. Once learners reach a SmartScore of 90, they’ll see “Next up” recommendations for skills that build upon what they’ve learned, so that they can continue to challenge themselves and make progress.

Skill plan updates and new skills

Spring Spotlight skill plans for math and ELA

Our Spring Spotlight plans are back! These skill plans provide 20 days of math and ELA skill recommendations for students in grades K-12, and focus on the most critical topics at each grade level. They’re the perfect opportunity for end-of-year review and spring test prep.

ACT WorkKeys Graphic Literacy skill plan

We’ve added our fourth ACT WorkKeys skill plan, Graphic Literacy. The Graphic Literacy assessment measures skills used when reading and interpreting charts and graphs to solve work-related problems. This skill plan features two new skills developed specifically for this skill plan (check them out here and here). Find the new skill plan here!

New standards skill plans

We are releasing skill plans for Oklahoma’s new math standards for Pre-K through 12th grade! These plans will help teachers as they prepare for full implementation of the standards in the 2023-2024 school year. Check out one of the plans here!

We’ve also released the following new standards skill plans: Nebraska’s College and Career Ready Standards (Math K-12), and Oregon K-12 Science Standards (Science K-8)! Check out one of the NE plans here, and one of the OR plans here!

New test prep plans

Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment for math, ELA, and science:

We’ve released new test prep skills plans for Minnesota’s statewide assessments! Minnesota MCA skill plans are now available for math (grades 3-8 and 11), ELA (grades 3-8 and 10), and science (grades 5 and 8). These plans are designed for review in the weeks leading up to the test. Check out the new plans for math, ELA, and science!

New York NWEA MAP Growth for math and ELA

We now offer skill plans for the New York 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 plans were created in partnership with NWEA and will automatically appear on the skill plan landing page for users from New York. You can check out one of the skill plans here!

Kentucky Summative Assessment for math and ELA

We’re releasing new test prep skills plans for Kentucky’s statewide assessments! Kentucky KSA skill plans are now available for all tested grades for Math, Reading, and Writing. These plans are designed for review in the weeks leading up to the test. Check out one of the new plans here!

New textbook skill plans: math, ELA, and science

We’ve added the following new textbook skill plans:

Progress in Mathematics grade 8 (Foundations of Algebra) and Algebra 1
CKLA Kindergarten (This completes our coverage of CKLA grades K-6!)
Elevate Science Course 1 (grade 6)
Saxon Math (grade 6)
Engage NY ELA (grade 7)
Wonders 2023 ELA (grade 3)
Math Makes Sense (Canada grade 2)

We also made updates to our plans for Carnegie Learning Math High School Integrated I, II, and III, and we updated grades 1-2 of Wonders 2017 and grades 3-5 California Go Math! to showcase our newest skills.

New ELA Phonemic awareness topic

We have added a new topic to ELA called “Phonemic awareness,” which includes the phonological awareness skills that are specifically focused on sounds (phonemes). Phonemic awareness is considered one of the key areas of reading instruction and is often mentioned in discussions of the science of reading. This update will allow teachers to easily find all of our skills that teach sound awareness. You can check out the new topic here!

New math skills

We’ve released a handful of new math skills! The new skills involve topics such as subtraction using cube trains, repeated addition, word problems involving solving equations with variables on both sides, writing addition sentences for pictures, classifying polygons, and finding domain and range of real-world linear functions.

New ELA skills for middle school

We’ve added three new reading and writing skills for middle school:

Combine main ideas from two texts (grade 6)
Evaluate newspaper headlines for bias (grade 6 and grade 7)
Draw inferences from literary texts (grade 7)

New science skills

We’ve added new second grade science skills:

New social studies skills

We’ve released more social studies skills for second and third grade:

Additional releases

Games now available on IXL’s Canada edition!

We’ve added IXL games to the Canada edition of IXL! The games have been localized for our Canadian users. Games are available for junior kindergarten through grade 5, and users can access the games from the grade landing pages!

There are 105 games on the CA edition, with a handful more to be added in the coming weeks. Check the games out here!

Math video tutorials added to grade 4 in the Canada edition

Video tutorials are now available for grade 4 on IXL’s Canada edition! This initial release features 390 videos in grade 4, covering 80% of the skills. Video tutorials are now available for grades 4 through 9 in the Canada edition, and we will be adding more videos in the coming months.

We’ve also released additional videos created by Canadian tutors! To see an example, check out the CA grade 6 skill on decimal place values.

Implementation guides page for the UK edition

We’ve added an implementation guides page in the UK edition, under the “My IXL” tab for signed-in teachers. The implementation guides cover quick and easy ways that educators can implement IXL in their classroom, such as daily teaching, diagnostic assessment, standards prep, and much more! Check out the new page here.

Registration now open for the 2023 Spring Learning Showdown contest

The Spring Learning Showdown is back, and registration is now open! During the month of April, classes on active classroom or site licenses from around the world will compete to see who can answer the most questions, and the top three classes from each grade band (pre-K to 4th, 5th to 8th, and 9th to 12th) will win a $250 gift card! Teachers can begin registering their classes now at www.ixl.com/contest, and the full contest rules can be found on our blog.

Skills practiced added to skill mountains in teacher reports

We have updated the skill mountains in teacher reports to additionally display the number of skills students have practiced. This will give teachers a fuller picture of their students’ activity on IXL because they can easily see the numbers of skills mastered, proficient, and practiced in one place.

Additionally, the skill mountains in teacher reports now match what is shown on the skill mountains in administrator reports, allowing for teachers and admins to see consistent data.

See the changes in the Teacher dashboard (as well as the printable achievement summary PDF) and Progress & growth report.

More math skills with Spanish support

We’ve expanded our Spanish-language support to include several new math skills in middle school and high school. These newly supported skills include Checkpoints about integer exponents, linear functions, describing transformations on the coordinate plane, solving linear equations and inequalities, understanding sector area and arc length, and proving theorems for triangles and parallelograms.

New math and ELA videos

We’ve released new math videos in grades 3 through geometry to expand our coverage in those grades! These videos cover topics such as ordering numbers, dividing fractions using models, independence and conditional probability, matching clocks and times, dividing fractions and mixed numbers using models, and proofs involving quadrilaterals.

We’ve also released 28 new Kindergarten videos to expand our coverage in phonics. These videos cover topics including choosing the short i sentence that matches the picture, which letter does the word start with?, completing the word with the right initial consonant blend and choosing the two sight words that are the same.

Want to stay up to date on everything IXL has to offer? Follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and be the first to know about our latest features.

The post What’s new on IXL – March 2023 appeared first on IXL Official Blog.

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