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!

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:

1. Find your Champions
2. 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.
3. 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 of they are under age 13. Visit this page to download an example permission slip
4. Develop playlists for the students in Khan Academy. The Khan Academy curriculum mapping project, which will be released in January by DCU, will have ready-baked playlists that are aligned to the Irish curriculum. In the meantime, make your own! Khan Academy has some great examples & tips for creating playlists. Assign the playlist exercises to the students by using the class recommendation.

Method:

1. Two groups of 20 – 25 children aged 10yrs to 12yrs work on Khan Academy for 1 ½ hours on a Saturday morning. At Galway, there are three sessions each Saturday, so up to 150 children in total every week.
2. Each child is set up with a user name and log in and work is assigned by coaches (usually two coaches per group – one coach in each group an experienced teacher) based on the level of the group initially (see preparation steps 3 & 4)
3. 3. At the first session the children are given an introduction to Khan and a comprehensive explanation and demonstration on how it works. (if you’re looking for some tips – there is an article about the learning dashboard here, and a video from Sal that introduces the dashboard here.
4. Once the children get familiar with the site, students work at their own level. Coaches continually monitor the childrens’ progress and if they are having difficulties completing a playlist coaches step in to help. This is to ensure they don’t lose confidence. Playlists are assigned in line with the curriculum.

…and maths confidence & fun is served!

Nuala Dalton is a Primary school teacher in Milltown N.S., Co Galway and PDST tutor. With Mark Finlay (PDST), she co-ordinated the piloting of Khan Academy maths camps at Galway Education Centre for primary school children. Nuala has also undertaken workshops and training for teachers on Khan Academy. In her own classroom she piloted Khan Academy in November 2013 and continues to use it as a tool in teaching maths. Her school Milltown N.S. came 2nd in Mathletes Challenge 2014, and 3rd in 2015.