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🎯 IMS Onboarding for Students - Individualized Math Skills

By Matt Richardson
Last updated about 1 year ago
22 Questions
Note from the author:
This activity is designed to "onboard" students into the individualized math skills system that I developed to leverage the free and universally available resources at Khan Academy along with a series of Google Sheets that I have developed for progress monitoring and reporting growth to multiple stakeholders.

🏅 Mastery Learning!

📈 Individualized Math Skills

In our class, we will use a systemic approach to leverage the resources available at Khan Academy to identify and address your unique math skills gaps at a variety of levels. This system involves identification, individualized learning activities, and progress monitoring.

🔎 Identification


First, you will complete a diagnostic test that samples skills from a particular math course or grade level. We will begin with courses below your current grade level and refer to each as your mastery course. These assessments are called the course challenges at Khan Academy and links to them are located at the top and bottom of each math course page. Course challenges typically include 30 questions representing the skills included in that course.

The purpose of a course challenge in our system is to help us understand what you know and what you have not yet learned. Course challenges should be stress-free and are NOT graded based on how many you answer correctly. You should spend no more than 2-3 minutes on each problem. We want to determine what you know now, not what you may be able to reason your way through if provided enough time.

It is important to complete course challenges with fidelity so we can accurately identify your unique knowledge gaps and then work together to address those as efficiently as possible.

🚜 Course challenges are like plowing a field. As is the case with your math skills at any particular level, a field can look great on the surface but have problematic rocks underneath. The rocks are easier to find and address after plowing. The same is true of gaps in your foundational math knowledge.
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4.

What assessments are used in the identification phase?

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5.

How many questions are typically included on course challenges?

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6.
Course challenges __________ graded based on how many you answer correctly. When completing a course challenge, you should spend no more than __________ minute(s) on each problem.
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7.

🚜 Describe how course challenges are like plowing a field.


🎯 Individualized learning activities


When you answer a question incorrectly on a course challenge, Khan Academy labels that skill as Attempted [as long as you have not answered multiple related questions correctly in the past]. This is one of 5 mastery levels that Khan Academy uses to describe your proficiency: Not started > Attempted > Familiar > Proficient > Mastered

Attempted skills are like the rocks in the field that were overturned during plowing. Now that we have identified them and understand where they are, we can work to address them much more efficiently!

Once you have completed a course challenge, Khan Academy makes it easy to find learning activities and practice problems related to your different skill levels.
  1. Log into Khan Academy (confirm your username at the top right)
  2. Click Courses at the top left and select the course related to the course challenge you completed. Remember that we call this a mastery course.
  3. See the colorful course skills display at the top of your mastery course page. Note the skill level key at the top and find the icon that represents Attempted skills.
  4. Just below the key, notice the skill boxes for all of the skills in the course, organized by unit. Hovering the cursor over these boxes triggers popups with additional details. This makes it easy to recognize skills at all levels throughout the entire course. Clicking on any skill box will open the related exercise.
  5. In this system, we are focusing on Attempted skills first. Consider your attempted skills and click on one to begin.
Opening an exercise provides access to several problems related to a particular skill. Beyond that, it brings a variety of related learning resources to you. These include articles, videos, and hints that will show and describe each step of every problem!

Of course, your teachers, classmates, and a wide variety of online resources are also available. Everyone learns differently, so you should determine the most effective way for you to leverage all of these great resources.

🚜 Get the rocks out of the fields!

Now that we have identified skills gaps, you will work to complete the related exercise sets. As you complete exercise problems, Khan Academy will track your correct and incorrect responses. In order to level up your skills from Attempted to Familiar, you must complete items related to that skill with 70% or greater accuracy. Again, note that this includes all past responses to related items at Khan Academy.

Since our goal is to level up attempted skills, you should work to earn scores greater than 70% on each exercise set. Now is the time to make sure that you learn the skills and concepts. Work hard and take advantage of your resources: linked articles, videos and hints, your teacher, your classmates, etc. You can retake exercise sets as many times as needed to learn the concepts.

Develop your skills with purpose and fidelity, as a favor to yourself! You are working to improve your own skills and confidence and to strengthen the foundation necessary for success and efficiency in your grade-level math courses.
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8.

Which skill level is like the rocks in a field?

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9.

What level of accuracy is required to level a skill up from Attempted to Familiar?

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10.

Which of the following are resources that can help you to learn concepts and level up skills while working on exercise sets? Select all that apply.

📊 Progress monitoring


Your Learner home page at Khan Academy provides a wide variety of metrics regarding your individual growth and the progress you have made toward your mastery goals at each level.

For example, you can navigate to your Learner home page and click on Progress under MY ACCOUNT in the left sidebar to see all of your recent progress at Khan Academy. This is similar to reports that are accessible to your teacher and can be used to track your recently leveled-up skills.

To count how many Attempted skills you have leveled up within the last week, for example, open your Progress page, and filter for the appropriate date range (i.e. last Thursday through this Wednesday). To see only progress within your Mastery Courses, select Course mastery goals from the All content dropdown. In this report, count all of the skills with upward-pointing green arrows and +2, +3, +4 or +5 in the CHANGE column.

The screenshot below shows a total of 5 skills that have been leveled up. Note that the report may include multiple pages. Those can be accessed by clicking Next at the bottom of the report.


Additionally, your teacher may use a spreadsheet to showcase progress and generate reports that are easy to share with you, your parents, and other adults who serve in supporting roles.
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11.

Your classmate is using his Progress page to count how many skills he has leveled up. How many leveled-up skills are shown in the report?

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12.

Identify the selectable regions that show skills that have been leveled up. Select all that apply.

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13.

Where can your classmate click to navigate to different pages of this report?

🔁 An upward spiral


After identifying attempted skills within a particular mastery course and leveling those skills up to familiar, proficient, or mastered, work with your teacher to determine which course challenge to take next.

If we conclude that you still have skills to master within the same mastery course, take its course challenge again. The new course challenge will include items representing different skills than before. You may discover some new rocks to address by re-plowing the same field.

If you conclude that you should move on to the next course, it becomes your new mastery course. Complete its course challenge and begin working to level up any attempted skills that turn up.

The process repeats as you successfully fill in your individual foundational skills and knowledge gaps. Note that this system is also effective for learning grade-level and more advanced concepts at Khan Academy, including non-math courses.
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14.

Place the IMS activities in the correct chronological order.

  1. Find attempted skills using the colorful course skills display at the top of your mastery course page.
  2. When you run out of attempted skills, work with your teacher to identify the next course challenge to complete.
  3. Complete the course challenge for your first mastery course
  4. Level up your attempted skills by completing related exercise sets at 70% or greater accuracy.

🌳 Navigating Khan Academy

Every time you visit khanacademy.org, make sure that you sign in to ensure that your progress gets saved and so that your teachers can see the progress you make.
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15.

Where on this image will you see your username when logged in?

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16.

Where on this image can you click to access your learner home page?

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17.

Where on this image can you click to expand/collapse a list of Khan Academy's courses?

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18.

Where on this image can you click to access the 4th grade math course?

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19.

Within this practice exercise set, where can you see how many questions you have answered correctly and incorrectly?

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20.

Within this practice exercise set, where can you click to access related resources to help you learn the concept(s) needed for this item?

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21.

After clicking Review related articles/videos or use a hint, where can you click to begin to see a series of hints that will show and describe each step of every practice problem?

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22.

🧠 Retrieval Practice:
Summarize the Individualized Math Skills System. In your summary, describe its purpose, process, and how you can benefit from it.