Whenever your class needs a lift, we’ve got a fun challenge for you and your students: Khan Kickoff!
Like LearnStorm, Khan Kickoff is a free motivation program that helps any teacher energize their students to master new skills on Khan Academy.
How It Works
There are just three steps:
- Sign-up now to get your free progress tracker + set-up your teams
- At the start of each week, challenge your students to master new skills with motivational videos from top athletes + performers
- At the end of each week, celebrate their success with progress reveals + custom certificates
Get Ready… Go!
Here’s your first video to get your students off to a strong start!
Questions?
How much does it cost to participate?
Nothing! Khan Academy is a nonprofit whose mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. So like all of our teacher resources, Khan Kickoff is 100% free (with no ads or limits).
Who can use Khan Kickoff?
Just about any educator! Because Khan Academy content spans K-12 and multiple disciplines, all educators are welcome to participate. Be sure to check out some of our interactive math worksheets and complete math curriculums to get a sense of what we offer.
Do I need to use Assignments or Course Mastery?
Since Khan Kickoff is focused on learning time and skills leveled up, it works with both methods. Which means that all you need to do is keep using Khan Academy as you always do (e.g., making daily assignments, promoting Course Mastery, or both). And so long as your students are investing time and mastering new skills, their progress will be rewarded!
How do I get started?
There’s just one key step: Sign-up for the program. Once you do, you’ll get your very own copy of the Khan Kickoff progress tracker and be ready to dive in!
How do I set up my teams?
You can have 2-4 teams using any of the following structures:
- Class Groups
- Example: Elementary classrooms may already have groups like the Red Table + Blue Table
- Periods
- Example: Middle + high school educators might have 1st Period challenge 7th Period
- Classrooms
- Example: You could challenge fellow educators down the hall or across the country
- Students vs. Teachers
- Example: You could start learning a new skill like Multivariable Calculus and track your progress against your students’
Here’s a two-minute overview on teams:
Note: While it’s easiest to have each team in a separate class when it comes time to paste in your weekly results, you can also make Khan Academy sort your single class in team order. Just add a team number (e.g., 1 – John Smith, 2 – Jane Doe) before your students’ names in Khan Academy. Then, they’ll automatically be sorted in that order on your Activity Tracker, making it easy to copy them right into your spreadsheet.
How do I introduce the program to my students?
Just let your students know that you realize how difficult this year has been — and that you want to offer special recognition for all the hard work they’ve been putting in. As such, they should continue to complete their assignments and/or Course Mastery work as before — but that you’ll be taking time each week to celebrate their progress as a team!
What do I have to do to run the program?
In addition to using Khan Academy as you always do (making Assignments and/or encouraging students to work on Course Mastery), there are only two key tasks at the end of each week:
1. Paste your students’ progress from the Activity Overview report into your progress tracker:
Note: Just delete your results from the previous week each time you paste in new progress.
2. Share the results with your students and celebrate:
How do I get my students energized?
In addition to the camaraderie of participating in teams, we’ve built in several extra motivating moments:
- Share our pep talk videos
- At the start of each week, we’ll send you a video from a top athlete or performer that you can use to kick off the program
- Celebrate your students’ success
- At the end of each week, just click through the tabs in your progress tracker to get a good drumroll going, showcase your scoreboard, and highlight your teams’ hard work
- Create custom certificates
- Use the Certificates tab to either print out personalized certificates for each student or save them to a PDF you can send out
Plus, you can always steal a page from Khan Academy Ambassador Conor Corey’s playbook and offer a custom reward… 🙂
Ever agree 2something w/out understanding what u agreed 2?
— Conor Corey (@ccorey223) October 5, 2020
Ss were working on @khanacademy #LearnStorm moving 2levels on Sunday Y🤔 Ohh bc like an idiot I agreed 2 eat ghost pepper at level 15 not knowing until watched YouTube 2day🤯 @TeachWithKhan #idiot pic.twitter.com/fYRP5zxTca
Is there a giveaway?
The Khan Kickoff giveaway has ended. However, stay tuned for more giveaways this year — you’ll get first dibs via email so long as you register for a free teacher account on Khan Academy.
How long does the program run?
You can use the progress tracker as long as you want!
Where can I see all the motivational videos?
See all the pep talks here.
Want to have more than four teams?
You got it! Here’s an XL Progress Tracker that can handle up to 8 teams. As always, feel free to delete any rows on the Scoreboard tab if you don’t want to use all the slots.
What if I teach SAT prep?
Good news: You can use the SAT Practice Activity report to power your program. Here’s a version of the Progress Tracker that’s calibrated to track Time Practiced and # of Practice Questions.
Can I run my program differently?
Absolutely! Since you can modify the progress tracker to your heart’s content, feel free to try other variations.
For example, you could just track your whole class’s progress week-to-week (similar to LearnStorm), using this alternate tracker.
PS: Shout-out to our Khan Academy Ambassador, Chuck Nebbia, for this great variation!
Do I need to run the full program to participate?
Nope! We totally understand that there are so many challenges facing educators right now. If you just want to show the pep talk videos to your students, that’s fine!
I have another question!
No problem! Just drop us a line and we’ll get back to you ASAP.