Khan Kids updates:
One of the many ways that the Khan Kids app supports young learners is by helping children as young as two years old learn to read. The app uses a combination of age-appropriate lessons, activities, and interactive experiences that adapt to the needs of each learner. To help students work toward reading comprehension mastery, the app guides young learners to first explore and master reading comprehension building blocks, including pre-literacy skills, phonics, and fluency.
In July 2023, we introduced new Khan Kids reading comprehension lessons and aligned Khan Kids content and activities to the Common Core standards for reading literature. These new reading comprehension lessons and updated standards-aligned materials are available for free to anyone via the Khan Academy Kids app and to the 13 school districts using Khan Kids through Khan Academy’s paid Districts Partnerships program.
Since the July reading comprehension launch:
- 1.4M students have used our new Reading Comprehension activities
- Students have accessed newly launched Reading Comprehension materials 8.8M times
- Learners have spent 15.6M cumulative minutes on Reading Comprehension activities
Whereas the Khan Kids app is recommended for young learners ages 2–8, Khan Academy’s core platform is recommended for learners ages 8+. As soon as a learner has a strong foundation in reading comprehension, they are empowered to explore a wide array of topics in the classroom as well as on our core platform.
Content updates for reading comprehension on the Khan Academy core platform:
Khan Academy’s mastery-enabled content is the backbone of our core platform. Over the 2023-24 school year, our U.S. content team created 20 new courses and thousands of practice questions, articles, and videos. These new additions to our content library included expanded English Language Arts (ELA) content offerings for grades 6, 9, and 10.
Our new 6th grade ELA content includes reading skills practice, such as analyzing text structure, identifying point of view, and tracing ideas across text, as well as practice questions designed to help students comprehend and analyze extended passages. The latter type of practice not only mirrors real-world reading experiences, but it’s also designed to mirror the experience of taking state assessments.
The 6th grade course is also designed to strengthen critical thinking through practice with affixes and Greek and Latin roots. Engaging videos teach students how words are constructed and how to use context clues and inferences to build vocabulary and understand word meanings. A vocabulary quiz and review at the end of each unit help reinforce vocabulary knowledge, positively impacting reading comprehension over time.
Our new high school courses for grades 9 and 10 focus on building essential, standards-aligned ELA skills that students need in order to comprehend and engage with complex, grade-level texts. Like all of our previously released ELA content, these courses are designed to teach and reinforce fundamental ELA skills through accessible articles, engaging videos, and targeted exercises. A new “Building Background Knowledge” section for each lesson helps spark curiosity about the topic and introduces relevant, high-utility vocabulary words. The new grade 9 and 10 courses don’t just develop literacy skills, they also build content knowledge across a range of 9th and 10th grade social studies and science topics. By integrating content from these subject areas, students can deepen their understanding and make cross-curricular connections.
Khanmigo updates for English Language Arts:
Historically at Khan Academy, we have not offered support for writing instruction because we did not have a method for providing meaningful feedback to learners. However, recent advances in generative AI have opened up possibilities for new and better writing feedback. Our Academic Essay Feedback tool allows learners to submit an essay for immediate, actionable feedback from Khanmigo. Khanmigo provides learners with feedback on essay structure, organization, and how well persuasive arguments are supported. Additionally, students have the opportunity to ask Khanmigo clarifying questions before iterating on their essay.
