What’s new on IXL – June, July, and August 2024

IXL Updates

At IXL, we never stop adding new features and skills to our award-winning teaching and learning platform, so you can always trust we’re on pace 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 our exciting summer of 2024 and back-to-school season, including a new state-of-the-art math benchmark assessment, language support for 50+ world languages, new administrator assessment tools, and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.

Table of contents:

Major releases

The IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark

We’ve released our most scientifically advanced PK-8 math assessment yet: the IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark.

The IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark is the only unified assessment-and-learning solution that enables students to move seamlessly from assessment back into meaningful instruction and practice. Designed with the same research-driven focus that customers have come to expect and trust from IXL, the IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark meets the highest standards for validity, accuracy, and reliability. 

The Benchmark provides:

  • Easy scheduling via administrator assessment settings
  • New, enhanced reports for administrators and teachers
  • Standards-driven reporting, with strands broken down by grade level 
  • A Real-Time mode for in-the-moment insights
  • Personalized action plans for every student
  • Spanish language support

In addition to a national common core aligned Benchmark, we’ve released state-specific versions of the Benchmark aligned to Texas and Florida standards, and have advanced standards reporting for Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming with more states to come.

At the beginning of the 2024 school year, accounts will choose to assess with either the IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark or with the IXL Classic Diagnostic. Accounts using the new Math Benchmark for PK-8 math will continue to use the IXL Diagnostic for their 9-12 math and K-12 ELA assessment needs. The IXL LevelUp™ Math Benchmark is available for the US edition of IXL for web, mobile, and the v10.0 iPad app. Learn more about the LevelUp™ Math Benchmark.

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Common Assessments and Quiz Library

Administrators have two new ways to create custom assessments using IXL’s vast library of skills! Common Assessments and Quiz Library provide administrators more freedom and oversight when evaluating what students throughout their district know.

Common Assessments

With Common Assessments, administrators can quickly create standards-aligned assessments and assign them directly to students in their school or district. Located under the “My IXL” tab, administrators can review current and past assessments on the dashboard as well as create and schedule new assessments from the studio. 

All administrators with access to IXL Analytics can create a Common Assessment, but only certain administrators can approve and send out assessments: 

  • School licenses: The account owner.
  • District licenses: The district primary administrator for district-level assessments, and the lead administrator for school-level assessments.
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Quiz Library

The Quiz Library is a flexible way for administrators to provide their teachers with pre-made, standards-aligned quizzes to use in their classrooms. Found in the “Quizzes” section of the “My IXL” tab, any administrator with Analytics access can add to their school or district’s Quiz Library.

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Reporting, student access, and availability

Administrators get comprehensive reporting on student performance for both Common Assessments and the Quiz Library. IXL’s new report makes it easy to see how students across a school or district understood material on their quizzes and assessments. Plus, administrators can filter and group results by grade, teacher, school, and demographic data to fine-tune the data they need.

Students can access both types of assessments from their Quizzes page, their student dashboard, or on the IXL app. 

Common Assessments and Quiz Library are available for the US, CA, UK, and AU editions, as well as the NZ, ZA, and IE editions. Learn more about Common Assessments and Quiz Library.

IXL in 50+ languages

IXL is now available in more than 50 languages! This unprecedented language support enables all students to make progress in essential skills, even if they are still building their English language abilities.

Teachers can make on-demand language support available to each student in their native language via their Profile & settings, to instantly provide tailored support for all of the English language learners in their classroom.

Then, with a simple click, students can see IXL’s math, science, and social studies skills in their native language.

This support is available on the US edition for all account types. Learn more about IXL’s language support.

IXL translation support in Chinese

Increased co-teacher collaboration

IXL is improving collaboration for co-taught classes! Teachers and administrators can now roster up to 10 co-teachers on one class’ roster. This enables teachers to have even more insight into what their co-teachers are assigning to students, starting with visibility into skill suggestions on the teacher dashboard and select reports.

Co-taught classes on the teacher dashboard

IXL Badges for teachers

Teachers have an exciting new way to celebrate and track their accomplishments! Like Awards for students, IXL Badges are a great way to motivate teachers to use all of the powerful tools available to them on IXL. Teachers can even download their badges and share them with their colleagues. Plus, administrators can dig into each teachers’ badge collection to get a better sense of how their teachers are using the platform. 

Located under the My IXL tab, teachers can earn two kinds of badges:

  • Exploration badges: Get rewarded for trying something for the first time! Explore the ins and outs of IXL’s best teacher features.
  • Milestone badges: Rise through the ranks from Level 1-10 by returning to favorite features again and again. Every skill suggested, leaderboard launched, Group Jam started, and quiz assigned counts towards your progress.

IXL Badges are available on all English editions of IXL.

IXL Badges for teachers

IXL Lesson Plans

Teaching whole-class math lessons is easier than ever with IXL Lesson Plans! This new release provides K-5 math teachers with a brand new resource to help them save time planning while delivering high-quality math instruction for their students.

Lessons plans provide clear learning objectives and standards alignment along with a warm up, direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice. Each lesson can be easily incorporated into instruction by either choosing individual lesson plans from the “Lessons” section on math grade pages, or by following along with the Weekly Boost skill plans.

IXL Lesson Plans are available to all teachers and administrators with IXL Math access on the US edition.

IXL Weekly Boost skill plan with IXL Lesson Plans included

New Time Spent report for school and district administrators

Administrators have even more insight into their students’ IXL usage with the new Time Spent report! Administrators can now track usage across key categories: Practice, Assessment, Quizzes, Group Jams, Instructional videos, and Learning games. Like many other reports, administrators can sort, group, and filter the results to get the exact data they need to inform their unique implementation.

The Time Spent report is available to all administrators on the US, Australia, Canada, and UK editions. Learn more about the new Time Spent report.

Feature updates

District and school spotlight skill plans

Now it’s easier than ever for lead administrators on school and district accounts to point teachers towards the content that’s most relevant for their students. Administrators can click the new lightbulb icon to add skill plans to the new “District Spotlight” or “School Spotlight” section at the top of the skill plans page.

Then, teachers and students will see the new spotlighted skill plans at the top of their skill plans page.

District-wide IXL Leaderboards 

Administrators with district access have a whole new way to energize their students with school versus school IXL Leaderboards! To start a new competition, administrators can go to the “Leaderboards” section of their “My IXL” tab and choose to create a competition between schools. Then, they can select the schools and grade levels or courses they’d like to participate in the competition. Administrators, teachers, and students that are participating will see each school’s ranking, along with the average score of each student in the school.

At this time, district-wide leaderboards are only available for accounts with 40 schools or fewer. We are actively working on optimizing performance and will release updates to expand these capabilities in the near future.

Schedule quizzes and control how results are displayed 

Teachers can now schedule quizzes ahead of time, and have greater control over how much detail students see about their quiz results. 

Schedule quizzes

Now quizzes are even more flexible, enabling teachers to select a start and end date and time for their custom IXL Quizzes. To help teachers stay organized, the Quizzes dashboard also has a new “Upcoming quizzes” section to keep track of scheduled quizzes. The end time can still be edited once the quiz has been published.

New student results settings

From a quiz’s dropdown settings menu, teachers can update what kind of results students see after they submit their quiz and once the quiz has ended. These settings can also be updated after publishing or ending a quiz.

Results shown to students

Difficulty Level in Trouble Spots reports

The Trouble Spots report now provides even more specific insights into the skills students are struggling with. Teachers can now see the associated difficulty level for each trouble spot, as well as a student’s current SmartScore on a trouble spot skill. Teachers can also sort the report by SmartScore or by number of questions missed.

These enhancements are available on all English editions or IXL.

Demographics data and groups in School Analytics

Administrators have greater ability to fine tune the student data they’re looking for on Analytics reports with new demographics data and “Group by” filtering options. 

Demographics data

Administrators will now be able to sort and group by any rostered demographic field, as well as see demographic information in both the student data chart and the export.

“Group by” filtering

Now, school-level administrators have more insight into their students’ data with the ability to filter and group analytics reports by grade, course, teacher, and available demographic data. 

The following reports now include demographic data and “Group by” filtering:

Complete K-12 audio support

IXL is committed to supporting students at all learning levels and at every step of their unique learning journeys. We’re happy to announce that all K-12 IXL skills now have accompanying audio support! This update will make learning more accessible for English language learners and for students who need additional support. Teachers and parents can enable extended audio support in their Profile & settings.

Personalized study plans for FastBridge

Teachers and students can now create custom study plans for the FastBridge assessment in both aMath and aReading! These new plans help learners to focus on the skills that will make the biggest impact in improving their scores. Like other study plans, students or teachers can enter a student’s previous assessment scores to generate a personalized list of skills to work on. 

Administrators that are interested in importing scores can reach out to the support team at studyplans@ixl.com.

Skill plan updates and new skills

New math skills

We’ve released a ton of new math skills for Kindergarten all the way through Calculus.

Elementary:

Middle school:

High school:

We’ve also released new math skills specifically for Florida:

New English language arts skills

We have several new reading skills in grades Pre-K through 2nd grade:

And, two new middle school English skills:

New book study skills

We’ve released new high school book study skills:

New science skills

We’ve released new elementary science skills:

We’ve also released multiple new science skills for high school biology:

New social studies skills

We’ve released a few new holiday skills for elementary grades:

A new skill for middle school social studies:

Plus, new social studies skills for high school civics:

Fall Power-Up Spotlight skill plans for math and ELA

Our Fall Power-up skill plans are back! These plans provide 20 days of math and ELA skills in grades K-12 that focus on reviewing and extending knowledge from the previous year, setting students up for a strong start to the school year.

Revamped Rosetta Stone Foundations (for ELLs) skill plan

To help teachers more seamlessly support English language learners with Rosetta Stone and IXL, we’ve strengthened our Rosetta Stone Foundations (for ELLs) skill plan. 

Each lesson is now organized into the following activity types:

  • Rosetta Stone: The exact Rosetta Stone lesson and unit.
  • IXL skills: The skills that provide direct practice for the lesson’s concepts.
  • Supplemental IXL skills: IXL Skills that further enhance students’ learning of concepts from the lesson.
  • On your own: Suggestions for relevant activities that students can practice outside of Rosetta Stone and IXL.

New textbook skill plans

We’ve released the following textbook skill plans:

Math:

ELA:

Science:

Social Studies:

United Kingdom:

New standards skill plans

We’ve released a handful of state standards skill plans.

Math:

ELA:

Science:

Social Studies:

New test prep skill plans

We’ve released skill plans for Arizona’s end-of-year state assessments: 

And plans aligned to the United Kingdom’s HiSET and Functional Skills assessments:

Personalized study plans for FastBridge

Teachers and students can now create custom study plans for the FastBridge assessment in both aMath and aReading! Learn more in our FastBridge announcement above.

Updated SAT and PSAT skill plans

We’ve updated our SAT and PSAT plans to match the new Digital SAT! Based on new guidance from the College Board, our skill plans have an updated structure, make more precise skill recommendations, and include new skills.

Additional releases

New math and ELA video tutorials

We’ve released 148 new math videos for grade 1 through Precalculus, covering topics like:

We’ve also released 34 new localized math videos for Canada in grades 4 through 10.

IXL now offers ELA video tutorials for pre-kindergarten through 8th grade! We’ve released over 60 new ELA videos covering phonics, reading, and writing strategies. Check out a few of the new videos:

In addition, we added Spanish subtitles to 80 more math videos, which are available to users with Spanish support enabled.

More math skills with Spanish support

We’ve expanded our Spanish-language support to include a handful of new skills in elementary school and grade 7. Some of the newly supported skills include:

New math skills and skill plans for United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada

We’ve released 5 new Calculus skills in Australia Year 12, UK Year 13, and Canada Calculus! These new skills cover topics such as: 

We’ve also added new skill plans for United Kingdom assessments and a textbook:

Redesigned IXL app for Android

The IXL app for Android has a new look! Along with updated navigation, new filters, and new page designs, students can access “From your teacher” skills, IXL Quizzes, and Skill plans!