Digital SAT Prep for School Districts - Khan Academy Districts

hello and welcome to driving digital sat success with KH Academy as teachers and students are navigating through the new digital sat assessment this spring we know how important it is to ensure your students are ready for the big day my name is Elizabeth Hadley and I am a district success manager with Con Academy and joining me today is Miss Corine gorner from Oola County Florida not only is Karine a former colleague of mine but she is also an amazing math coach at topa kaga High School in oila

County Karine has taught math um in high school for over two decades and she is now a very seasoned math coach um in Oola in 2015 she discovered the benefits of using KH Academy initially to help prepare her steps on for college but today she now implements it with all of her teachers at her High School in preparing all of her students to get ready for the SAT we're really excited to have Karine with us today to share her insights of how she's implemented KH Academy districts at her High School

how she motivates and engages teachers and keep students motivated for the big test day welcome Karen thank you to get us started let's just remind everyone that At Con Academy we are the proud and official partners with the College Board that means when your students are practicing with our digital sat reading and writing or digital math courses that those questions that they're practicing with are authentic practice questions that are truly designed to help students prepare for the digital sat

our two courses involve um and include eight fulllength practice tests leveled exercises videos lessons and strategies to help teach students um all the skills that they need to know for the math or the reading and writing section lastly our courses provide our students instant feedback and progress tracking um to identify students strengths and weaknesses in the skills in our two courses let's go ahead and talk about some of the changes that your students can expect to see this spring with the

new College Board digital sat first and foremost it is a new shorter test with a new format and no essay the biggest change is that students will experience a multi-stage adaptive technology meaning that students will answer a series of questions in the first module which will dictate their experience in the second module these are two stages and each stage is called modules students will also expect to see a shorter test so the reading and writing which is um either 200 to 800 points for a sco

re but they will experience 27 questions and have 32 minutes for that module for my e ELA teachers out there the biggest change um for your content area is that the students question formats are quite different from years past students will now experience shorter chunks of text with a text dependent question instead of reading long reading passages of 1200 words now students will look at one short quick piece of text and answer one text dependent question on that short piece of text for my math

folks listening here today students will experience those same two modules just like Ela module one and module two they will have 22 questions and 35 minutes to answer those questions and the biggest change for Math teachers is a calculator is allowed on all questions of the digital sat math portion this year students will have an embedded Desmos calculator in embedded within the Blue Book platform or they're also allowed to have a handheld calculator with them as well and I know all educators a

re so um excited for this we're looking at an approximate 2hour testing experience which is quite shorter than years past so how can K Academy help our students actually prepare for this new testing format within our platform we have the digital sat reading and writing course and then the math course within those courses teachers will expect to see units that contain indepth lesson article Les videored examples for students to practice with and several practice exercises that measure their diffi

culty levels on three um easy medium and more challenging on all of the skills within the courses on the right hand side of the screen you'll see that um the reading and writing course has hundreds of digital s items aligned within 11 skills and with the math students will experience 37 unique skills and thousands of adapted practice items for them to practice through our teachers love our course challenges quizzes and unit tests because it provides them with actual skill progress data so you ca

n track exactly how your students are performing on these 11 skills in reading and writing and those uh 37 skills with math now moving over to Karen with this transition to the digital sat so for years we've been working with our students on paper based Administration how has KH Academy this year helped you and your teachers and your students prepare for this upcoming switch to the digital platform thank you Elizabeth so I kind of um believe as an educator the best way we can always prepare our

students is to have them as familiar as possible possible with the material that they're going to be exposed to so there is not any other tool out there minus the little bit of practice tests that are within the Blue Book platform that is this quantity of questions this amount of practice that Khan Academy has so I think really allowing our students to get on there to practice with it to become familiar with it over and over week after week that we've built into our curriculum it's really given

them that opportunity to feel confident in the moment it's not going to feel new it's not going to feel surprising it will feel comfortable and I think that's one of the best things we can do as teachers to support our students as far as um using this to support our teachers one thing we've been really able to do within the KH Academy platform there is all of the information on about the digital s and we've been able to use a lot of that to train our teachers but as well um for them to pass alon

g to their students I've used that within a lot of small groups to work um with groups of students that I've pulled out to make sure they're familiar they're comfortable with what it's going to look like with the facts about the test like you just mentioned in your previous slide um as well as with some of our dual enrollment students on on both ends of the spectrum we've been really working to make sure they're comfortable for test day and I think this is the best thing out there as far as givi

ng them that familiarity with the platform thank you so much for sharing your insights and I absolutely do believe this is the best way to just get our students used to answering questions and working through mathematical problems on a computer um so let let's go live and let's actually see uh what is this content what do these questions look like for our students in the platform and I'm going to first actually navigate over to what Karine was just mentioning about the digital sat um so demoing

here from a demo account I'm going to start here on the teacher dashboard uh this is what our teacher dashboard looks like for our teachers when they log in um if you are a con Academy District partner your uh classes will be synced here with the with the rosters but if at any time you would like to just preview what's in our courses you can visit khanacademy.org click on courses and navigate right over to our digital sat and you'll see this brand new fancy new button here just to help navigate

your eye to it and when I get here to this landing page I'm presented with that digital SAT Math and that digital sat reading and writing let's go ahead and start with math and Karine just double checking can you see the screen yes okay y thank you so much for confirming all right so here we are in the digital SAT Math this is actually what it does look like for students you can see all of the units that we have in this platform for math we have 13 units and within these units are actual skills

exercises and challenges for students to work through now just like what Corine was talking about here is that section what is the new digital sat so again this can be used with teachers in small groups or plc's or after school training but it can also be used with students so that they're familiar with what is the digital sat and what will it look like and how can I prepare there's even videos frequently asked questions and a section about the digital sat uh PSAT and msqt these can be assigned

to students or again they can be used in a whole group or with teacher training moving back over to the ELA course this course also has the same unit at the very beginning about the digital sat that walks students or teachers through the same type of content but then you also see unit 2 unit 3 unit four and a grammar practice um within um our reading course now I'm going to travel back to the teacher dashboard because I want to show you how teachers can specifically assign any of the content tha

t are in um these courses so from that teacher dashboard on the left side navigation you'll see under assignments assign and as soon as the teacher has selected the course if they need to you can click edit courses you're going to see kind of a similar view that I was just showing you so here's all those units in the digital SAT Math course and all the teacher needs to do is expand out these units and you you can preview articles and videos and all of the things in um that unit and you can pick

and choose to assign these specifically to students so I selected uh three pieces of content click assign I can assign this to one or all of my sections one or all of my students and I can select a start time and a due time for my students and hold them accountable for completing these exercises that I'm assigning them as you can see here in our math course under that preparing for the SAT we have a section on the calculators time management what to expect on test day understanding scores and ag

ain all of these can be assigned to students down here you can actually preview some of our content that's available in this platform so if I open up our geometry and trig unit you can see it starts with area and volume and there's an article two videos and an exercise within this lesson so perhaps I want to assign an article a video and I want students to demonstrate their understanding with an exercise simply click those three items click assign choose your classes or choose your students clic

k assign and it immediately goes to the students account once students are finished and they've completed your exercises that you've assigned to them visit the scores area and you're able to see your students name the assignments that you assigned at the top and the score that they received if they watched a video you'll get a check mark and so that way you know they actually watched your video so that is a brief overview of what's available in our courses and how you can assign content to stude

nts um to keep them on track for the big test day and so I'm going to turn our attention back to Karine um because this is something she's doing all the time on her campus with her teachers and helping support her Math teachers so our question is uh Karine how do you Monitor and measure the success within our digital sat courses on your campus um what do you look for what do your teachers look for um on a daily weekly monthly basis so I've made it a hard part of my my Monday routine each week to

set aside at least I always aim for an hour but on teacher time you just that that's flexible but to to get in there and to dig and I look for Trends and I look for Monday morning it's just part of my routine I'm looking through all of our teachers I'm looking and seeing if I can identify trends that are happening here or there whether there's a a room and a period where the students are really exceling and I want to make sure I go in there and I celebrate that I touch back back with my admin l

et them know that's a good spot to just and celebrate um obviously there's good things going on during that time or the flip side of that like to kind of alert me to like okay something's going on with this certain teachers fourth period let me touch base with them and see is there um maybe a classroom management issue that could be contributing to that is is the just the level of learning in there does it need extra support and is that a good place for me to spend the extra minutes I have in th

ere weekly a couple times to to kind of just be an extra set of hands for my teachers um so I kind of look through all those reports and I look for and identify Trends on the like the period the teacher side but I also look for um a lot of individual students that I'm working with as far as like seniors that might be in danger of not graduating and making sure that they're making progress each week because they have um in in our state we have the option to use the SAT score as a graduation requi

rement so I want to make sure those students are making progress um but also I have our high achieving students and I want to make sure they're not stuck on something and I know you know I've got certain kids that I have my eyes on that are really trying to get into some very competitive colleges really trying to get their scores up and that can kind of help me identify that maybe they're stuck and I want to check in with them to see if they just need some extra help getting past a hurdle they m

ight be on and the same I use that you know the same conversations are and I think the teachers after seeing me do these sort of things now for going on what will be three years they're starting to kind of model that same thing with their smaller group of students and kind of see like what period do they see a trend in is that a period you know reach out for me to come in and support them more or again the the reward side as well to see who's doing really well and who to reward great insights an

d just for our audience um you know Karine and her District partner with this Us in with our KH Academy District side of things and uh she's able to look into her teachers classrooms and help support them each Monday as she's looking at the progress now I'm going to jump back into KH Academy and just kind of show the audience here what does it look like for the teacher view um so in this teacher account they're able to track on a classroom class period basis which students are working by learnin

g minutes and um how many skills the students have leveled up within a particular course in any given date range um now Karine at your campus this year you've been focusing on how many skills the students have leveled up correct right so we um we had two different competitions that we decided to run this year our first semester competition was focused on skills leveled up we were looking for um classes um amongst each type of class AP classes preparing for graduation classes honors classes um th

at had students with the most skills leveled up and then we had celebrations for them and then this semester our focus is on individual students that get a certain number a certain percentage of their skills to proficiency so we're going to be reaching out in oh there's my question we're gonna be reaching out and celebrating those kids with um we do a woot woot wagon so we'll be celebrating those kids as well through that yeah and and some of my team members are really excited to visit for that

so here you see Karine here on a very special day um last year we had the pleasure to visit her campus and actually see some of her students getting the big news that they were going to graduate um because they had increased their SAT score after using KH Academy and so um we appreciate your partnership Karine and we know um how special you are to our partnership there in Oola County and all the great work that you've done um as part of our con Academy districts what we pride ourself is that as

students are working and your schools are working and your administrators and coaches are working as administrators you are able to save time and see actionable reports um so that's what Karine was just you know speaking about that you know every Monday she's able to tap into all of her teachers and kind of take a look at you know who may need support this week or who's actually doing okay and may not need her support um and really looking at the skills the students are exceeding in and maybe al

tering curriculum with Con Academy districts you also receive automatic rostering of teachers which also also saves time with students logging in and helps you and your district and your leaders all see the progress that your students are achieving with con economy districts you also um get the support of a district success manager like myself I work with lots and lots of school districts and we are proud to work with the districts and helping align the content that you see in our digital sat co

urses to The Curriculum maps and the curriculum content that your teachers are actually um teaching in the classroom so it just kind of makes that natural sense for not only the student and also the teacher and of course our administrator dashboard is unique to our Academy District Partners where you're able to look at Trends on a districtwide or schoolwide level um unlike um any other reporting tools and this not only help helps you drive Department decisions but also helps you and your coaches

and your um leaders think about next steps in instruction now we have worked uh quite a while with Ula County Florida and Kine specifically for implementing a culture surrounding KH Academy on her campus and really helping students believe that they can increase their SAT score and so Karine I would love for you just to highlight your journey and the time you've worked with us at Khan Academy and just describe the culture that I know you've worked really hard to create at your high school topa

kiga um surrounding KH Academy so I think you touched on it kind of back when when you you introduced me back in the beginning about how I really saw the value of it using it um my first kind of introduction was all just kind of figuring it out myself using it as a stepmom to a kid that needed a better SAT score and really starting to see the value of like wow this is changing and this is working and then starting to have a conversation with um his friends parents and that sort of thing and then

really started getting more comfortable and used it in my algebra 1 classroom just not even through the SAT lens at that point with my ninth graders but just in the algebra 1 content itself as I was kind of still learning and getting my feet wet as well at that time we did not have any District partnership with KH Academy so any sort of um learning and support I was like finding on YouTube emailing KH Academy finding someone else that knew what they were doing listening at a conference whatever

it might have been and I think over these past several years it's really just come to in education there are so many things that as we all know that come and go and that and change and there's a lot of curriculum that that sort of fits what you what you need it to fit whether it's curriculum for a specific course or a test like the SAT and a lot of things are are close to fitting or they're they're melded to fit um but honestly tried and true this this is correct and this does fit and I feel li

ke that's why I have fallen so in love with it and really committed to making sure that the students are receiving the benefit of that so I think when I um changed from just being um like from being a classroom teacher to being kind of helping others um create what works in their classroom in the role that I'm in now this was one of the very first things I spoke to them about and I just said like this is it's not going away like it's it's here to stay and it and it's correct the the questions gi

ve the right answers the the support is there things that you run into with other platforms and other programs I did not run into with KH Academy and I think that really really helped with the buyin um from my teachers as well so I think having that like standard of like it works it's correct and we're getting results so when we started using it um at my school three years ago when we really started using it schoolwide it is we had a massive shift in in test scores and not just SAT test scores b

ut test scores for end of courses test scores for district common assessments all of the things and we we just kind of really started to realize like like that has been the biggest force of change that we have used as far as the curriculum side so obviously something's happening and I think that really helped with the buyin and the students were seeing a difference too in their data yeah and just like uh that picture we showed a moment ago that was just a really proud day where that student lear

ned um you know her future was very bright well Karan it was such a pleasure having you today and and speaking with you and having you share your Insight uh we thank you so much for all the hard work that you do every single day for not only your students but your Educators and for those watching we thank you so much for joining our webinar today and learning on how to prepare your students for the digital sat if you have any questions or you would like more information about any of the content

that we spoke about today please feel free to contact us at districts. con academy.org and again thank you so much for joining and have a wonderful day