Bring history, geography, and culture to life with IXL’s comprehensive K-8 social studies curriculum! IXL Social Studies is designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills while deepening their understanding of the world around them. Our carefully crafted skills build students’ contextual understanding while they apply social studies concepts to real-world situations.
Let’s take a closer look at how IXL Social Studies can support your classroom.
In-depth and accessible content
IXL’s in-depth social studies content covers civics, economics, geography, world history, U.S history, and more. Our curriculum is aligned to all 50 states’ standards.
IXL Social Studies skills challenge students to draw information and conclusions from high-quality primary and secondary sources, maps, charts, diagrams and more. Each question checks both students’ comprehension of the material and their ability to turn that information into a deeper understanding of the topic.
For example, this skill about the Boston Massacre doesn’t just ask students about facts and dates; it also has them compare accounts of the Boston Massacre from differing perspectives, analyze how colonists would have viewed those accounts, and draw conclusions from artistic interpretations of the event.
Easy differentiation
IXL Social Studies is built to give each student a personalized learning experience and allow teachers to both differentiate instruction and make connections across disciplines. Students have access to all K-8 social studies skills, so you can assign easier or harder skills as needed.
Additionally, IXL gives students their own skill recommendations and tailors question difficulty to learners based on their needs, helping you bring out your students’ full potential.
Supportive skill progression
IXL Social Studies uses an innovative scoring system specifically designed to support the unique nature of social studies curricula.
Students’ progress through IXL Social Studies skills is marked by stages. Each social studies concept is broken down into steps designed to help students learn and check for understanding. If a learner misses a question, they’ll receive immediate feedback explaining how to get the answer right. When students answer questions correctly, they’ll see bonus information that extends their learning, making connections to students’ lives or raising thought-provoking questions. Once students complete all of the stages, they achieve mastery of the skill!
By giving learners space at every stage to think critically and actively engage with their learning, they gain a stronger understanding of each concept. Students who know the material can move through skills quickly. For those still building their knowledge, IXL delivers personalized recommendations and explanations at each stage to help fill in the gaps.
Ready-made social studies skill plans
Need ideas on how to incorporate IXL Social Studies skills into your classroom? We’ve done your lesson planning for you! IXL skill plans take the guesswork out of lesson planning by providing the exact set of skills for students to work on. Our social studies skill plans are custom-built to match your state standards and popular textbooks.
To make lessons even easier, you can assign skills and track progress directly from IXL skill plans. This creates a perfect opportunity for teachers to provide a seamless transition from whole class instruction to online practice and personalized learning! Head to the skill plans page under the Learning tab to explore all of IXL’s social studies skill plans.
Personalized skill recommendations
IXL empowers students to choose the social studies concepts they want to work on from their Recommendations wall. These recommendations are customized for each student based on their IXL skill practice, to help them grow from where they are. The different types of recommendations encourage learners to identify and fix their own knowledge gaps or take on new challenges.
By default, the Recommendations wall suggests skills from all subjects. Students can filter to see only social studies skills by clicking on the subject icon at the top right of a skill.
See IXL Social Studies in action
Interested in learning more about IXL Social Studies? Explore our social studies skills for yourself! If you’d like more ideas, check out our case studies to find out how educators are using IXL with their students.
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