Amanda Bellas is a Senior Professional Learning Specialist with over 15 years of experience in teaching and instructional coaching. She brings a wealth of expertise and a deep commitment to instilling in every student the values of growth, resilience, and a passion for lifelong learning.

With so many instructional tools at your fingertips within IXL, it may be hard to narrow down how to utilize all of your options! IXL curriculum, resources, and assessments can fit with any instructional routine, and match your lesson no matter the objective.

Here are some ways to maximize learning with IXL throughout the week!

Monday:

To make the most out of IXL’s curriculum, let’s start by exploring the extensive library of skill plans! Skill plans make lesson planning efficient by organizing the skills that align with your textbook or state standards in one easy-to-follow guide. You can pin your favorite skill plan using the ‘pushpin’ icon to make planning and using reports even easier. Then, you can assign individual skills from your pinned skill plans, or choose from the hundreds of skills available for each grade level. 

When you introduce your lesson topic to the class, Group Jams are an exciting way for classrooms to work together on IXL skills. All students in the Jam will see the same question at once, so you can gauge the class’s understanding of a topic in real time. Afterwards you’ll receive a summary of students’ answers you can use to address misconceptions before moving on. Whether you are teaching your entire class or small groups of students, Group Jams are an effortless way to use IXL for instruction!

After introducing your lesson topic to the class, release students to work on your selected IXL skills. You can also have students work on these skills for homework or as one part of a station rotation in class. Whichever way you choose, be sure to remind them to work toward achieving a SmartScore of 80, which is proficiency! 

If you are utilizing IXL’s Assessment Suite, Monday is a perfect time to have students visit the Arena to work on their Diagnostic in Real-Time mode. If students visit the Arena regularly, IXL can provide pinpointed levels and personalized skill recommendations in as little as 10 minutes a week! This Diagnostic Action Plan is an incredible resource for students that will enable them to close knowledge gaps and make real progress.  

Tuesday & Wednesday:

Throughout the week, analyze student progress using one of IXL’s intuitive and actionable reports. IXL Analytics provides you with the data you need to make instructional decisions with ease. The Skills Practiced report will list students’ SmartScores and any Trouble Spots they may have encountered. You can also check the ‘Suggested Skills’ box to filter the list to only those priority skills you’ve assigned! Plus, the Skill Analysis report offers detailed practice data for each student and even creates small groups for you based on levels. 

Independent work time is a great opportunity to suggest students work on skills from their Diagnostic Action Plans, which they can find under their Assessment tab, or skills you’ve assigned. Whether you have this time built into your block daily or once a week, setting clear expectations for which skills they should be working on will help everyone be successful. While you deliver targeted remediation to a small group, feel confident that independent workers are supported with the instructional resources built into IXL!

And, you can even track students’ progress on their action plan skills in IXL Analytics! On the Students Quickview report, Student Usage report, and Live Classroom, look for the blue Diagnostic recommendations icon, which indicates the skill they practiced came from their action plan.

Thursday:

It might be time for a review of the content taught during the week! Reviewing with IXL is an engaging way to solidify topics and give students another chance to apply their knowledge. 

Create a custom Leaderboard to have students compete over total questions answered, skills proficient, time spent on IXL, and more. Encourage students to complete skills related to the current objectives and watch their excitement grow as they climb the Leaderboard. Or, set up a Lightning Jam! Much like Classic Group Jam, everyone will see the same question at the same time, but now individuals can also earn points for quickly and correctly answering each question! 

Friday:

Finally, end the week by assessing students’ knowledge of the content with the Quizzes tool. IXL Quizzes is a custom creative assessment builder that provides detailed performance reports for anything from a three question exit ticket to an end-of-unit test! 

To get started, go to the Quizzes page and click “Create new quiz.” For math, ELA, and Spanish questions, you choose a skill, question difficulty level, and the number of questions you’d like to add, and IXL will automatically generate questions drawn from that skill for your quiz. When assigned, the Quiz will immediately be available for students on their “From your teacher” section on the Dashboard.

And there you have it: a comprehensive weekly plan that includes some of IXL’s most loved tools and resources. The possibilities are endless when you have IXL in your classroom!