What’s new on IXL – October 2025

At Home, In the Classroom, 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 October, including physics skills for high school, IXL Minis for students, scheduled end times for suggested skills, and more! To stay current with our latest updates, follow IXL on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.

Table of contents:

Major releases

High school physics

IXL now offers high school physics as a part of its science curriculum! Physics joins IXL’s other high school science courses, biology and chemistry, to nurture students’ capacity for critical thinking and curiosity while helping them learn about the world around them.

High schools typically teach physics to students in 11th or 12th grade, and they often assess physics proficiency in an end-of-course exam or as part of a comprehensive science test in 11th grade. In either case, IXL’s physics content gives teachers and students excellent material to prepare for these assessments.

IXL’s high school physics curriculum is fully aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards and has standards skill plans for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and American Samoa.

A skill for high school physics being practiced. The skill is about properties of electromagnetic waves. The skill shows several examples of electromagnetic waves in everyday life, such as x-rays and microwaves, as well as a few paragraphs explaining what electromagnetic waves are. It then asks learners to mark true statements from a list.

IXL Minis for students

We’ve released IXL Minis for students—a brand-new set of IXL Minis, created by high school students! These engaging videos offer authentic insights into how students can use IXL to succeed academically, stay motivated, and build skills that last beyond the classroom.

Students in grades 6-12 using the U.S. edition will have access to these student Minis by clicking on the new “IXL Minis” tab under MyIXL. Teachers with students rostered in grades 6-12 will see a new link on their Minis page directing them to the Student Minis page, so they can easily preview and share it with their students.

Feature updates

Schedule end times for suggested skills

Teachers in all English-language editions can now schedule end times for their suggested skills! Skills with scheduled end times will be automatically unsuggested and removed from student dashboards at the specified time. Together with scheduled start times, released earlier this summer, teachers have a useful new way to lesson plan on IXL.

Additionally, there’s a new Past tab for suggested skills on the Teacher Dashboard. This tab will show a list of past suggested skills from this school year, making it easy to reference previously covered content. The list will include all past suggested skills, regardless of whether the suggestion was ended manually or by scheduled end date.

On a list a skills, a user has selected a skill to two classes of students. In the bottom right corner of the scheduling menu is a calendar icon, which is selected, opening a menu to schedule start and end dates and times for the suggested skill.

Group Jam mode for Instant Review

Instant Review now has a new Group Jam mode, expanding teachers’ options for how they can use this powerful classroom engagement tool!

Instant Review transforms students’ Trouble Spots into an engaging whole-class review. Now, teachers can choose how to launch their Instant Review session:

  • In Presentation mode, teachers present and walk through questions on their screen while students follow along. (This is perfect for a quick review, since students don’t need to grab their own devices.)
  • In Group Jam mode, teachers can launch an interactive session where students answer each question live on IXL. (This works just like a Group Jam, but the skills have been pre-selected to target your students’ current needs.)

In Group Jam mode teachers can view student responses in real time, and see a detailed summary at the end of the session with an analysis of student responses.

In an Instant Review, a teacher sees which of their students are working on a particular skill, as well as the number of correct and incorrect answers submitted so far. There is an option to move from this simultaneous skill practice to a review.

New sections of District Dashboard

The District Dashboard has been updated to give a more comprehensive view of the data available in IXL Analytics! The additions include:

  • A new Time Spent visualization to give administrators an overall view of their usage when they first sign into IXL, and provide an easy entry point to one of our most popular reports
  • A new Standards Proficiency Overview visualization section to highlight IXL’s useful standards-aligned practice reports
  • A new LevelUp Assessments section providing a high-level overview of student performance on the LevelUp Diagnostic

These changes give administrators a clearer picture of the powerful data insights they can find in their Analytics reporting.

A view of the "Engagement" section of the District Dashboard. There is a new Time Spent graph, showing the total amount of time students have spent on IXL and breaking it down by skill practice, assessment, quizzes, Group Jams, and games.

LevelUp Diagnostic Action Plans for administrators

Admins can now access student Diagnostic Action Plans directly from the LevelUp Diagnostic Results report! To view the action plans, admins can navigate to the student view of the LevelUp Diagnostic Results table on District and School Analytics. By making these plans more accessible, IXL is enabling administrators to track student growth more effectively.

On the LevelUp Diagnostic Results table, hovering over a student

LevelUp ELA Diagnostic standards reports for 7 more states

We’ve released IXL LevelUp Diagnostic for ELA standards reports for the following states:

  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Georgia
  • Kentucky
  • Maine
  • New Jersey
  • Pennsylvania

Teachers in these states will now be able to track their students’ knowledge of state standards after completing an ELA assessment.

LevelUp Math Diagnostic standards reports for Louisiana, New York, and Rhode Island high school standards

We’ve added LevelUp Math Diagnostic standards reports for Louisiana’s, New York’s, and Rhode Island’s high school math standards. The new courses included are Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. We will continue to release additional states’ high school standards reports in the coming months.

New language support: Nuer and Tibetan

IXL provides comprehensive support for 100+ languages, enabling all students to make progress in essential skills, even if they are still building their English language abilities.

We recently added support for additional languages:

  • Nuer: An East African language spoken primarily in South Sudan and Ethiopia.
  • Tibetan: An Asian language spoken primarily in Tibet.

To turn on language support for learners, go to your Profile & Settings page and “Enable translation support” for specific students.

Spanish language arts for the IXL iOS app

IXL Spanish Language Arts is now available for the IXL app on iPad and iPhone! Students can find and practice skills in all available SLA grades on the app, as well as find teacher-suggested SLA skills. Additionally, the following features now fully support SLA on iOS:

  • Quizzes and Common Assessments
  • Video tutorials
  • Group Jams and Lightning Jams (iPad only)
The Spanish Language Arts 4th grade landing page viewed on an iPad. The page shows five topics with skills related to each topic, with more topics listed lower on the page.

Updated profile options for Family accounts

We’ve updated the profile icons available to parents and children on family accounts! Along with updating the current set of icons to be more engaging and reflective of IXL, we’ve added 23 brand-new icons, including more animals, sports, and hobbies.

The updated set of icons more closely aligns with the design style of the child dashboard themes, creating a more cohesive experience on IXL. With this update, IXLers have more opportunities to find an IXL avatar they’re excited to set as their profile icon.

A collection of 43 round profile icons that Family users can now choose from. Icons are illustrations of animals, toys, and objects related to hobbies and sports.

Skill plan updates and new skills

Learn to Read skill plan for grades 4 & 5

We’ve expanded the popular Learn to Read skill plan to include fourth and fifth grade, extending coverage from Pre-K through Grade 5. Fourth and fifth graders can follow this plan to strengthen their reading foundations, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

As with grades Pre-K through 3, the skills in the plan follow a developmental progression aligned with the typical scope and sequence of reading instruction. Each grade level targets essential reading skills to build age-appropriate proficiency. New concepts are introduced strategically throughout the year, with spaced repetition to promote deep, lasting learning.

To better support these upper grades, we’ve also added some new reading foundation skills. In these skills, students refine their phonics knowledge with a focus on segmenting, reading, and spelling multisyllabic words both in isolation and in context. They also learn to divide words into syllables, recognize and understand prefixes and suffixes, and decode and spell words containing affixes.

IXL

New NWEA MAP StudyWise plans for South Carolina

IXL’s StudyWise tool turns student’s previous test scores into their own personalized study plans. We now offer StudyWise and skill plans for South Carolina’s NWEA MAP Growth assessments!

The new plans for South Carolina cover the following MAP tests:

  • Math SC 2025: K-2, 2-5, 6+
  • Reading SC 2023: K-2, 2-5, 6+
  • Language SC 2023: 2+

New math skills

We’ve released new skills for elementary and high school:

New English language arts skills

We’ve added 12 new reading foundation skills for grades 1–3. Some examples include:

Also, in grade 4, we’ve added Match homophones to their meanings to help students distinguish between homophones and understand their meanings in context and isolation.

Finally, we’ve added a new book study skill to grade 11: Analyze passages from The Prince: Part 2. In this follow-up to our Part 1 skill, a variety of rigorous reading strategies questions guide students through important passages from the second half of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and highlight the rhetorical techniques Machiavelli uses to persuade his audience. Whether you’re a ruler of a small kingdom interested in consolidating your power or a savvy student who likes to make (and win) arguments, this skill has something for everyone.

New Spanish language arts skills

We’ve added eight new Spanish language arts skills! Here are a few highlights:

  • ¿Cuál título de libro es mejor para la imagen? [Which book title goes with the picture?] (Grade 3): Students are presented with unique images that could be found on the cover of a book. Using their inference skills, they choose the book title that best goes with each image.
  • Analizar organizadores gráficos [Read graphic organizers] (Grade 4): Students are presented with a variety of colorful, informative graphic organizers (timelines, continuum scales, event chains, bubble maps, Venn diagrams, and tables) and asked to answer questions based on those organizers.
  • Leer ficción realista con ilustraciones [Read realistic fiction with illustrations] (Grade 5): Students read creative short fiction texts paired with beautiful illustrations and answer questions that guide their understanding of the story.

New science skills

In addition to the new high school physics skills, we’ve released over a dozen other new science skills for middle and high school:

New social studies skills

We’ve released a dozen new social studies skills from kindergarten through high school:

New textbook skill plans

We’ve released skill plans for the following textbooks:

Math:

ELA:

SLA:

New standards skill plans

We’ve released new standards skill plans for the Iowa Academic Standards for Science (adopted in 2025), covering grades K-8, Biology, Chemistry, Physical Science, and Physics.

We’ve also released standard skill plans for the newly drafted Alberta Program of Studies grades 7-9 math standards. Many schools have started implementing the draft standards this year, with a full province implementation in 2027.

Additional releases

New math, ELA, and SLA video tutorials

Math:

We’ve released 34 new math videos to expand our coverage of video tutorials! These videos cover topics such as multiplying decimals using grids and using derivatives to relate position, velocity, speed, and acceleration.

We’ve also added Spanish subtitles to 23 more math videos. Like translated skills, translated subtitles are available to users with Spanish support enabled.

Language arts:

We’ve released 14 new ELA videos across grades PK through 6! These videos cover topics such as ordering images in a story and reading about business and technology.

Plus, we’ve released six more SLA videos across grades 3 through 5. Check one out here!

Editable resources in Spark Studio

Teachers are now able to edit their resources directly in Spark Studio, from tweaking the wording of a sentence to adding entirely new questions! This gives teachers more flexibility and control to use Spark Studio to meet their classroom needs.

A lesson plan generated by Spark Studio. The user is editing one of the paragraphs.

New Takeoff vocabulary glossaries

Takeoff now has glossaries in both English and Spanish for grades K-5! These glossaries include academic vocabulary that students should develop throughout the year, or that they may come across and need to look up. With this feature, students have a new way to answer their own questions about lessons in Takeoff.

Teachers can view the glossaries in their grade’s additional resources tab. All students have access to the English glossary, and students with Spanish support enabled also have access to the Spanish version.

A Takeoff glossary page for the letter R, in Spanish. Each entry shows a word in both English and Spanish, the definition of the word in Spanish, and an image illustrating the word or demonstrating its concept.

Independent practice for Takeoff grade 2

We’ve released the first 5 units of independent practice workbook pages for Takeoff grade 2! Takeoff already provides practice pages for students in grades 3-5, and now we’re expanding them to lower grades.

Teachers can find independent practice pages and answer keys within the materials list for the lessons where they’re available. The remaining grade 2 units will be available within the next few months.

New Takeoff slide decks

We recently added a new type of material for Takeoff, Takeoff instructional slides! Teachers can use these instructional slide decks to teach Takeoff lessons alongside provided student materials. We’ve added new instructional slides, meaning our slide decks now cover the following units:

  • Kindergarten Units 5-8
  • Grade 1 Units 5-9
  • Grade 2 Units 5-8
  • Grade 3 Units 5-8
  • Grade 4 Units 7-9
  • Grade 5 Units 7-9

These slides are available as downloadable PowerPoint files in the Materials section of each lesson. We’ll continue releasing slide decks throughout the year.

Takeoff alignment to Oregon state standards

We’ve added alignments for the Oregon Mathematics Standards to our K-5 Takeoff curriculum. When signed into a Takeoff account from Oregon, users will see their state standards in all the usual places, such as on each grade level’s landing page and at the top of each unit and lesson.

New math skills for Canada, the UK, and Australia

We have released new skills for our Canadian, Australian, and UK editions! Some examples include: