By Kami Soltesz
Hey, everyone!
My name is Kami, and I’m a math content team member here at Khan Academy. I’m so excited to announce on behalf of the math team that our second-grade course is newly updated!. As a former elementary school teacher, I still remember searching for a free, go-to source to help my students learn and practice all the content that’s packed into the standards. Well, this new course on Khan Academy is just that—a comprehensive online resource for all things second-grade math. The new and improved second-grade course provides learners with a smooth progression through the Common Core Math Standards. We’ve added more than 20 new exercises to the course to allow greater depth and breadth of learning. We also created new videos that engage the user in a quick and fun way.
- Engaging content: Our team worked hard to create items that use visuals, such as number lines, tape diagrams, base ten blocks, and ten frames to make our content more colorful and fun. We also found ways to incorporate whimsy and even some characters you may know (like Elsa and Olaf) in our content. Learning math may be challenging, but we also want to ensure that it’s FUN!
- Aligned instruction: We meticulously researched the standards to ensure that each one is being appropriately addressed and assessed. As we built the course, we continuously considered the three CCSS shifts of focus, coherence, and rigor. Both the practice content and the instructional content are aligned to the CCSS.
- Conceptual understanding: As a former elementary teacher, I still remember trying to encourage students to conceptually understand the content instead of memorizing it. We worked hard to put a focus on conceptual understanding throughout the course. We included scaffolded exercises, digital interactive tools, and visuals that will help solidify the conceptual piece of different standards.
- Hints, hints, hints: When I was in the classroom, I remember feeling the frustration of trying to help students who were stuck during their practice and not being able to help every student at the same time. It seemed like I needed to clone myself to allow each student to get the individual support they needed to progress through the content. Enter hints! Every single practice question consists of custom hints that tackle misconceptions and make sure students understand the process to work through each individual problem. The hints are crafted to allow a productive struggle for students by scaffolding the solution in a way that makes sense and is age appropriate.
We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done to totally revamp our second-grade course. We hope you love it as much as we do!
