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 video tutorials for English language arts skills, mobile support for IXL games, iPhone app support for the Real-Time Diagnostic, and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Table of contents
Major releases
English language arts video tutorials
Lights, camera, action: English language arts video tutorials have arrived! IXL now has videos for nearly half of our pre-kindergarten and kindergarten Reading Foundations skills. These tutorials help students learn how to read in a fun, engaging, and effective way. They provide research-based direct instruction for early literacy skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, and sight words, and they align with the science of reading.
Like IXL’s math video tutorials, these videos can be accessed from the practice page of their associated skills by clicking the “Watch a tutorial” link. Check out a few examples below:
- Which two words start with the same sound?
- Read sight words set 1: ate, he, of, that, was
- Choose the correct digraph
We will continue to release more pre-K and kindergarten videos in the coming months.
Feature updates
Real-Time Diagnostic for iPhone
The Real-Time Diagnostic has been added to IXL’s iPhone app! Students can now enter the Diagnostic arena on an iPhone to pinpoint their current levels for ELA and math strands. They can also see a summary of their levels on the Diagnostic tab, and view skill recommendations for each strand.
Students can now play IXL games on their favorite mobile device through a browser such as Safari or Chrome, giving them another way to learn on the go! Try it out by playing this game on your phone or tablet. (Games are not currently available in the IXL app.)
Game activity now included in Live Classroom
Speaking of games, student game activity on IXL is now reflected in the Live Classroom report! With Live Classroom, teachers can see what students are working on in real time, and the report will show games that students are currently playing, what skills they are working on, or if they are taking a quiz or are in the Diagnostic Arena.
Printable Student Quiz Results report
The Student Quiz Results report for IXL Quizzes is now printable. This means that teachers can print out an individual student’s results on a quiz and go over it with the student for extra review, or share with the student’s parents.
Similar to the Questions Log report, the Student Quiz Results report has filters that allow teachers to only show missed questions or hide correct answers. These filters will also apply to the printed report, allowing teachers to tailor the printed report to their needs.
More export options for the Snapshot Growth report
We are excited to give district administrators more control over their data exports to better meet a variety of district needs. There are two new export options for the Snapshot Growth report for district administrators:
- Administrators can now select which Snapshots from the previous school year will be included in the export. All Snapshots from this school year for the selected grade will also be included, and the default option will be for all possible Snapshots to be selected.
- Administrators now have the option to select all grades to be included in the export instead of only the selected grade, downloading one CSV file for all students.
Progress & Growth report date filter
We have added a date filter to the Progress & Growth report in Teacher Analytics, which helps teachers—and admins viewing the teacher’s report—to see student skill progress and overall growth for a specific period of time.
Skill plan updates and new skills
New standards skill plans: American Samoa
We’ve greatly expanded our standards skill plans for American Samoa, adding ELA grades K-12, social studies grades 2-8, and science grades 2-8! This will help teachers in American Samoa find IXL skills to support their lessons.
We’ve added the following new math skill plans:
- STEMscopes Math Texas Grades K-3
- Progress in Mathematics Grade 3
- Big Ideas Math FL B.E.S.T. Grade 6, Grade 7 accelerated
- Big Ideas Math FL B.E.S.T. Grade 7
- Reveal Math FL Algebra 2
- Precalculus with Limits: A Graphing Approach 8e
We’ve also updated the Engage NY, Eureka Math, and Eureka Math Texas Kindergarten skill plans to include many skills specifically tailored to the curriculum.
We’ve added the following new ELA skill plans:
- Wonders 2023 Grade 5
- EL Education Grade 6
- CKLA Grade 6 and the last half of Grade 2
We also updated ReadyGen for grade 2 and Wonders 2014 for kindergarten to showcase our newest skills.
New ELA non-fiction book study skills
We’ve added two new non-fiction book study skills to grade 7:
In these skills, students read passages from Walter Lord’s riveting account of the Titanic’s demise and answer a variety of reading strategies questions about them. Part 1 covers roughly the first half of the book, and Part 2 covers roughly the second half of the book.
We’ve released some new skills in elementary through high school! The new skills involve topics such as using models to solve subtraction word problems, describing transformations, comparison word problems and graphing logarithmic functions.
We’ve added a new science skill. In Brightness of the Sun and other stars, 4th and 5th grade students learn that differences in the apparent size and brightness of the stars are due to their relative distances from Earth. In particular, the Sun looks like the biggest and brightest star because it’s the closest one to us!
Additional releases
Permanent skill IDs in the Australia edition
We have added permanent skill IDs to the Australia edition of IXL, just in time for the start of the new Australian school year. Permanent skill IDs are 3 character codes that are uniquely assigned to a skill and will never change, even as new skills are released.
Permanent skill IDs help to easily identify the skills you need. Typing a permanent skill ID into the search bar is a great shortcut that teachers and students can use to get instant access to any IXL skill. This release will also help the IXL team add skills to the AU edition more frequently without impacting the permanent skill IDs.
We’ve released 47 new grade 3 math videos and 15 new geometry videos to expand our coverage in those grades! These videos cover topics such as finding fractions of a group: word problems and writing equations of circles in standard form using properties.
Canada edition math video tutorials for grades 5 and 9
Video tutorials are now available for grades 5 and 9 in the Canada edition of IXL! This release features over 300 videos in grade 5, covering more than 75% of the skills, and over 250 videos in grade 9, covering over 80% of the skills. We now provide math video tutorials for grades 5 through 9 in the Canada edition, and we will continue to add even more videos to the Canada edition in the coming months.
More math skills with Spanish support
We’ve expanded our Spanish-language support to include a few dozen new math skills in grades Kindergarten through Geometry. These newly supported skills include Checkpoints about solving equations and inequalities, and skills about solving quadratic equation word problems and creating pictographs.
Want to stay up to date on all of IXL’s latest updates? Follow IXL on your favorite social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.