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 few months, including the universal screener in Spanish, new diagnostic reports for schools, updates to Leaderboards and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Table of contents:
- Major releases
- Spanish support for the universal screener
- New school Diagnostic reports
- Feature updates
- IXL Group Jams on all major tablets
- Choose specific subjects on school-wide Leaderboards
- In-skill recommendations for Android
- Video tutorials landing pages
- Link directly to video tutorials
- Skill plan updates and new skills
- New math skills
- New ELA skills
- New ELA book study skills for middle and high school
- New science skills
- New social studies skills
- New textbook skill plans
- New standards skill plans
- New state test prep plans
- New Checkpoints for Integrated I and II
- New lesson for Geometry
- Additional releases
- New math video tutorials
- Complete phonics video coverage for Pre-K and Kindergarten
- Phonics videos now available for Grade 1
- More middle school ELA videos
- Spanish captions for math video tutorials
- More math skills with Spanish support
- Learning hubs for AU and UK
- Implementation guides for the Canada and Australia editions
- More math video tutorials in the Canada edition
Major releases
Spanish support for the universal screener
We have expanded our Spanish-language support to the universal screener! Students will now be able to opt into taking their screener in Spanish from the screener’s introductory page. The entire assessment will be given to students in either English or Spanish, making it easy to assess students’ math knowledge in their dominant language. Teachers and administrators will also be able to see which language students took the screener in. Learn more about IXL’s universal screener.
New school Diagnostic reports
Now, school leaders have access to the same comprehensive diagnostic reports as district administrators, granting even more insight and control over school-wide data.
The four new reports give school leaders new ways to visualize data, boost progress, and facilitate meaningful conversations. Plus, advanced filtering and export options help administrators extract and share the precise details they’re looking for.
The new reports are:
These reports have replaced the former Diagnostic Levels report. The reports are available to all school accounts with access to the Diagnostic.
Feature updates
IXL Group Jams on all major tablets
In addition to the iPad app, IXL Group Jams are now available on the Android and Amazon tablet apps! When teachers start a Group Jam, their students can join from their IXL app on all major tablets, as well as directly from IXL.com. Learn more about IXL Group Jams.
Choose specific subjects on school-wide Leaderboards
We’ve updated school Leaderboards so that administrators can select specific subjects to count towards the Leaderboard! For example, during the set-up process, admins are now able to create a school-wide Leaderboard just for math skills.
Learn more about school-wide Leaderboards.
In-skill recommendations for Android
In-skill recommendations are now available on the Android tablet, Android phone and Kindle tablet apps! Just like on the iPad and iPhone apps, all users can now see recommended skills by clicking on the blue button in the bottom right of the practice screen.
Video tutorials landing pages
We’ve added landing pages for IXL video tutorials! The landing page displays all of the video tutorials that are available for each grade level. When you click on a video, you’re taken to the practice page for the corresponding skill, with the video already opened!
The page can be accessed from the main grade landing page (using the videos button at the top right of the page) and also from the Learning hover menu. These video pages are available in both math and English language arts.
See one of the video tutorials landing pages. Learn more about IXL video tutorials.
Link directly to video tutorials
We’ve also made it easier for educators to link directly to a video. The video popover now has a “Share video” button, which works just like the “Share skill” button. Teachers will be able to copy the video link or share the video directly to Google Classroom, Facebook, or Twitter.
Skill plan updates and new skills
New math skills
We’ve released new math skills for elementary school! The new skills involve topics such as:
- Finding the next number (Kindergarten)
- Sorting shapes (Kindergarten)
- Addition using open number lines (Grade 2)
- Using place value to add (Grade 2)
- Using compensation to add and subtract (Grade 2)
- Modeling fraction multiplication (Grade 5)
New ELA skills
We’ve added new ELA skills for elementary, middle, and high school students. These include skills that correspond to ACT Workkeys skills, phonics skills, reading foundation, and more.
Here are a few of the new skills:
- Choose the letter that matches the consonant sound: B, D, J, K, P, T, V, Z (Pre-K)
- Choose the short a word that matches the picture: lowercase (Pre-K)
- Choose the picture that matches the word: ng, nk (Grade 1)
- Spell multisyllabic words (Grade 3)
- Identify relevant sources (Grade 6)
- Revise the sentence using a stronger verb (Grade 6)
- Read about animals (Grade 7)
- Read about science and nature (Grade 7)
- Identify relevant sources (Grade 8)
- Evaluate newspaper headlines for bias (Grade 8)
- Read company policies and procedures (Grade 11)
- This skill also helps students prepare for questions they’ll encounter on the Workplace Documents Assessment for ACT WorkKeys.
New ELA book study skills for middle and high school
We’re expanding our popular book study skills! We’ve added new books for both middle and high school. These skills have students read passages from critically acclaimed novels and literary non-fiction books and answer a variety of reading strategies questions to analyze the text. The companion skills covering the second half of the high school books will be added in the upcoming months.
- Analyze passages about Esperanza Rising: Part 1 (Grade 6)
- Analyze passages about Esperanza Rising: Part 2 (Grade 6)
- Analyze passages about I Am Malala: Part 1 (Grade 6)
- Analyze passages about I Am Malala: Part 2 (Grade 6)
- Analyze passages about Travels with Charley: Part 1 (Grade 8)
- Analyze passages about Travels with Charley: Part 2 (Grade 8)
- Analyze passages from To Kill a Mockingbird: Part 1 (Grade 9)
- Analyze passages from Night: Part 1 (Grade 9)
- Analyze passages from Things Fall Apart: Part 1 (Grade 10)
- Analyze passages from Into Thin Air: Part 1 (Grade 10)
New science skills
We’ve released new science skills!
- Weather patterns (K-Grade 1)
- How do gray squirrels change the forest to meet their needs? (K-Grade 1)
- Natural resources (K-Grade 1)
- Reduce, reuse, recycle (K-Grade 1)
- Earth materials: water, rocks, and soil (K-Grade 1)
- Design a race car track (K-Grade 1)
- Severe weather: blizzards (K-Grade 2)
- Bodies of water (Grades 1-2)
- Where do giraffes and beavers live? (K-Grade 2)
New social studies skills
We’ve added new social studies skills!
- Which source should you use? (K-Grade 1)
- Authority figures (K-Grade 1)
- Abraham Lincoln (K-Grade 1)
- Memorial Day (K-Grade 1)
- Helen Keller (K-Grade 1)
- Then and now: Work and play (K-Grade 1)
- Pledge of Allegiance (K-Grade 1)
- Good Citizenship (K-Grade 1)
- Use map keys (K-Grade 2)
New textbook skill plans
We’ve added new skill plans for textbooks:
ELA textbooks:
- Engage NY (Grade 8)
- Essential English Skills for the Australian Curriculum (Years 7-10)
Math textbooks:
- Tennessee Reveal (K-Grade 8, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry)
- Core Curriculum by MidSchoolMath (Grades 5-8)
- Carnegie Texas Math Solutions (Accelerated Grade 6 and Accelerated Grade 7)
- Big Ideas Math California (Grade 6-Algebra 1)
- Tennessee Big Ideas (Grades 6-12)
- Progress in Mathematics Fundamentals (Grade 7-Algebra)
- Saxon Math (Grade 8)
- Agile Mind (Precalculus)
- Updates to the Eureka and EngageNY (Grades 6-8) and to Investigations (Grade 4-5)
New standards skill plans
We’ve released the following new standards skill plans:
- Australian New South Wales Curriculum for math and English (Years 3-10)
- United Kingdom SATs for Maths and English, Key Stages 1 and 2 (Years 2 and 6)
- Arkansas Social Studies Academic Standards (K-Grade 8)
- Arkansas ELA Standards 2023 (K-Grade 12)
- Arkansas Mathematics Standards 2023 (K-Grade 12)
- Ohio’s 2022 Early Learning and Development standards for ELA and math (Pre-K)
- Tennessee Academic Standards for Mathematics (K-Grade 12)
New state test prep plans
We released new test prep skills plans:
- Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program for math, ELA, and science (Grades 2-8 for math/ELA and Grades 4, 6, & 8 for science)
- California CAASPP (Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments) for Math and ELA (Grades 3-8 and Grade 11)
- California Science Test (CAST) (Grades 5 and 8)
- Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) (Grades 3-8, Algebra 1, and Geometry for math; Grades 3-8, English 1, and 2 for ELA; Grades 3-8 for science)
- Washington Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) (Grades 3-8, and Grade 11 for Math and ELA)
- Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS) (Grades 5 and 8 for science)
New Checkpoints for Integrated I and II
We’ve expanded our Checkpoints for multiple states to include High School Integrated 1 and 2. Teachers and students in these states can access these Checkpoints directly from their state standards skill plan.
These states include: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
New lesson for Geometry
We have released one new Geometry lesson: The triangle inequality theorem. With this release, we’ll have 57 total lessons for Geometry. Take a look at all of our Geometry lessons here.
Additional releases
New math video tutorials
We’ve released 55 new math videos to expand coverage in existing grades. These include 47 new grade 3 videos, 1 new grade 5 video, 9 new grade 6 videos, 5 new grade 8 videos, 2 new Algebra 1 videos, and 10 new Geometry videos. These videos cover topics such as finding the correct amount of change and comparing temperatures, graphing equivalent fractions on number lines, solving quadratic equations in word problems, which picture shows more, and finding slope from a table.
With this release, we have over 2,100 math videos! Learn more about IXL video tutorials here.
Complete phonics video coverage for Pre-K and Kindergarten
We’ve released 34 new phonics videos to complete our coverage in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten! These videos cover topics such as what consonant blend a word starts with, identifying complete sentences and sentence fragments, which letter a word ends with and choosing the word that matches the pictures.
Phonics videos now available for Grade 1
Phonics video tutorials are now available in Grade 1! This initial release features 40 videos in grade 1, covering about 50% of the skills in the “Reading foundations” category. These videos cover topics such as spelling words with digraphs and creating two-syllable words.
More middle school ELA videos
We’ve released 9 new grade 6 ELA videos to expand our coverage in middle school ELA. Check out one of those videos here.
Spanish captions for math video tutorials
We’ve extended our Spanish-language support to include math video captions! This release adds Spanish captions to the video tutorials for most translated skills in grades 6 and 7, and 50% of grade 8. See an example video here!
Like translated skills, translated captions are available to users with Spanish support enabled. When users are watching these videos, if they select the “CC” icon to turn on captions, Spanish will appear as a language option. We will continue to release more math video captions in Spanish in the coming months.
More math skills with Spanish support
We’ve expanded our Spanish-language support to include over a dozen new math skills in elementary school and high school. These newly supported skills include:
- 6 Checkpoints about transformations, geometric constructions, right-triangle trigonometry, and conditional probability.
- 4 Geometry Checkpoint skills covering parallel and perpendicular lines, triangle congruence and similarity, and right triangle trigonometry.
- 2 grade 8 Checkpoints about congruence and similarity transformations.
- They also include skills about writing multiplication sentences for arrays, interpreting frequency charts, and multi-step word problems involving money.
Learning hubs for AU and UK
We have extended our learning hubs to include the AU and UK editions. These hubs highlight the ways families and educators can use IXL to best support their students, and point them towards resources to help them maximize learning
See the new hubs:
Implementation guides for the Canada and Australia editions
Teacher’s on IXL’s Canada and Australia editions now have implementation guides in their “My IXL” tab. The guides cover topics such as daily teaching, diagnostic assessment, standards prep, and much more!
More math video tutorials in the Canada edition
Video tutorials are now available in grades 3 and 10 for the Canada edition! This initial release features more than 280 videos in grade 3, covering about 70% of the skills, and more than 270 videos in grade 10, covering 90% of the skills! There are also 9 new videos in grade 6 created by Canadian tutors. We now have videos in grades 3-10 for IXL’s Canada edition. We will continue to add more videos to the Canada edition in the coming months. Learn more about video tutorials on IXL Canada here.
