Khan Academy tips for primary parents
Today’s blogpost comes from the magnificent teachers at St. Peters Primary School in Bray – the Co. Wicklow and Leinster Primary School Champions for MATHletes Challenge 2014. Back in September they wrote a blog introducing St. Peters parents to Khan Academy, and it was too good not to share! Check out the original post and other MATHletes stories on their award-winning blog at www.stpetersbrayblog.com/. Originally published 30/9/2014
Wednesday for Parents: Khan Academy
Welcome to this week’s ‘Wednesday for Parents’! As you may know, one of our success stories last week was our involvement in Mathletes, well documented here. Mathletes is a free tournament that aims to change the teaching and learning of Maths in Ireland. It’s an online and in-person competition that uses Khan Academy as a tool to improve the student’s maths skills and knowledge. Today’s ‘Wednesday for Parents’ is all about how you can use Khan Academy as a parent to improve your child’s Maths skills.
What is Khan Academy?
So, what is Khan Academy? Khan Academy is a non-profit organisation that aims to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere for free. It uses a combination of videos, practice problems and lessons to help students to develop their own learning.
How do I sign up my child?
You have the option to open a parent account and sign your child up, using your parent account, or, if your child already has an account, you can link the two accounts to monitor your child. When you sign up (for free), you’re instantly directed to seven tips about using Khan Academy as a family, such as how to monitor their progress, reward their successes and set goals and milestones. There’s also excellent articles on how to support your child’s learning when you don’t know the content and how to motivate different types of learners.
What can students …Read More
Spotlight on: Galway Khan Clubs
Thinking about starting a Khan Academy Club for the MATHletes Challenge?
Here is a ‘recipe’ from the Galway Education Centre for a Primary level Khan Academy Club, brought to us by Nuala Dalton, Galway EC Khan Academy Tutor.
We all know that the best meals are usually those that don’t follow the recipe exactly, making a few additions and substitutions depending what is in the house. So learn, tweak, and consider starting your own club for the next school year!
Recipe for Saturday Khan Academy Clubs (Primary level)
Serves: 150 primary students each week
Time:1.5 hours per club
Ingredients:
2 Khan Academy Champions: Education Centre tutors, teaching assistants, or volunteers (good substituions include retired teachers, newly qualified teachers, parents, second or third level maths students, or excited community volunteers!)
1 space to hold the camps: Space should have reliable Wifi access (allow for 1Mbps per student for watching videos). It can have its own computer lab, or students can bring their own devices. Khan Academy has additional information on technology setup, device considerations, and using KA with limited resources.
20 students (+ or -): A large number of the children who attended the initial Galway camp in Oct 2013 continued to sign up for each subsequent camp right up to June 2014. Demand for places every week was far greater than could be offered.
A dash of hard work, a sprinkle of organisation, and heaps of passion for learning maths
And the not-so-secret ingredient: Khan Academy!
Preparation:
Find your Champions
Advertise opportunity to local schools, through email, flyers, or word of mouth. Make the invitation open, or ask teachers to nominate 2-3 students who they think would be interested in, or benefit from the club.
Create a Khan Academy coach account, and student learner accounts. Create a class and add students to the class. Parents should sign permission slips allowing accounts to be created for their students …Read More
Start Simple, Just Start: a Maths Week Challenge
An Olympic marathon runner
An investor on Dragon’s Den
An international space station astronaut
Salman Khan
What to all these people have in common? They are the masters in their fields. A marathon runner wins gold after hundreds of miles of training. A successful investor builds global company after countless struggles and failures. An astronaut spend hours in zero-gravity chambers before being allowed into space. Sal Khan still spends nearly every morning recording videos for Khan Academy’s 10 million users worldwide.
But before all of these minutes spent running, investing, suspended weightless or teaching lessons…these individuals did one very important thing. They laced up their shoes, worked out their first balance sheet, tackled newtons’s basic laws in physics class, and recorded their first video….they did one simple thing: they started.
MATHletes: Getting going with Khan Academy
Thousands of students, parents and teachers have been introduced to Khan Academy throughthe MATHletes Challenge. Provincial finalists, national champions, primary and secondary teachers from large, small rural, and urban schools have taken up the Challenge. MATHletes from 30 counties and 4 provinces, each boast a unique collection of Khan Academy badges, having mastered maths skills between music lessons, after camogie practice, or before heading off to Coderdojo on a Saturday morning.
Despite all these differences, MATHletes had 2 things in common:
Most had never used Khan Academy before the MATHletes Challenge.
To be precise, 70% of students, and 85% of teachers who participated in MATHletes 2014 (and more than 50% in 2015) were new to Khan Academy.They started.
All is takes is a few minutes to sign up and create a Khan Academy account!Maths Week Challenge: Start Simple, Just Start
In honour of Maths Week this year, we pose a special Challenge to teachers, parents, and students across Ireland to get geared up for MATHletes 2016 with Khan Academy:
Start Simple, Just Start
This Challenge isn’t like other competitions: it isn’t about being the fastest or the smartest …Read More