Talethia Steward Davis is an IXL District Partnership Specialist with more than a decade of educational experience.
IXL’s personalized learning platform includes comprehensive K-12 curriculum and instructional resources, classroom engagement tools, a powerful assessment suite, and actionable analytics. As a district or school administrator, you may be wondering how to ensure that your school community is making the most of everything IXL has to offer.
A great place to get started is our Admin Resource Center, which is full of tools to jump start a successful IXL implementation.
Looking for even more ideas? Here are three key ways to increase IXL usage across your school or district:
- Incorporate IXL into your schools’ schedule and instructional program
- Boost engagement with fun learning competitions
- Monitor progress with IXL Analytics
- Get inspired by the IXL community
Dive into these fun and simple strategies!
Incorporate IXL into your school-wide schedule and instructional program
Here are a few ways that you can make IXL a consistent part of your school’s routine:
Set IXL proficiency goals
IXL is designed to guide students toward authentic skill mastery. As students answer questions on IXL, they’ll receive a SmartScore indicating their level of understanding in a topic. While mastery (a score of 100) is always possible, it’s not always the right goal for every student. Instead, we recommend students practice to proficiency (a SmartScore of 80)! Studies have shown reaching proficiency in at least two IXL skills a week boosts end-of-year test scores.
By encouraging teachers to have their students work toward a SmartScore of 80, you’ll create a specific goal that’s shared across your school community, creating a successful path to student proficiency.
Recommend specific IXL skill plans
IXL skill plans offer custom-built skills that perfectly match your textbooks, state standards, and assessments, including MAP Growth, ACT, SAT, and more. Identify the skill plans that are the best fit for your school, and let teachers know that you recommend using them. This will make it simple for teachers to use IXL to support their daily instruction. Check out more skill plan tips for administrators in our 3-step guide.
Establish shared grade-level quizzes
Encourage grade-level teams to use IXL Quizzes for shared weekly assessments. With IXL Quizzes, teachers can create custom assessments and share them with other teachers in the same school. This is a great way for grade-level teams to collaborate and ensure that students in a grade have access to the same essential knowledge and skills.
After a quiz has ended, teachers can use the Quiz Analysis report to find shared trouble spots for their class, and assign more practice to students who need it.
Create designated IXL time
Designate time during the week to use IXL for review, intervention, or enrichment. Create a fun name, like GAME time (“Goals Are My Everything”), to get classrooms invested in and excited about reaching their proficiency goals on IXL.
Celebrate success
Encourage teachers to use IXL’s printable bulletin board pack to set goals for their class and track their progress. To give students an extra boost of motivation, at the end of the month, you can reward classes that reach their proficiency and mastery goals with fun prizes—like extra recess, “choose your seat day,” or homework passes.
Encourage healthy competition to create excitement among students
School-wide competitions are a great way to build community and supercharge student performance beyond a single classroom. To build excitement and push your school’s IXL usage to the next level, try one of these fun competition ideas:
Create the Principal’s Proficient List!
Start a school-wide Leaderboard tracking the number of skills proficient each week, and encourage classrooms to reach for at least 2 skills proficient. The classroom in each grade level with the most skills proficient could hold the crown for “Principal’s Proficient List” of the week! To reward the winning classes, display their names around the school or hand out crowns to wear all week.
Principal lunch +1!
Encourage long-term learning goals with a celebratory lunch for the class that reaches proficiency in the most skills each month. You can even build excitement with a decorated table in the cafeteria, or a special pizza party lunch with the winning class. For added fun, include treats like cupcakes or candy for the winners and runners up.
Use School Analytics to monitor usage and progress
Easily see achievement data and actionable next steps with IXL School Analytics. These are a few of our favorite reports that help you monitor student progress and maximize school-wide engagement.
Building Mastery report
The Building Mastery report provides a quick look at the total number of skills per week that students have reached proficiency and mastery in. Keeping in mind that a SmartScore of 80 is proficiency and a SmartScore of 100 is mastery, this is a great way to track progress towards the goals you’ve set as a school community.
Live School report
Want to see exactly what students are doing on IXL at any given moment? Live School is a great way for administrators to monitor school-wide usage, whether students are working in the classroom or at home. Administrators can send a message through Live School, in real time, to motivate and encourage students as they practice skills. Students will be so excited to see a message from their school administrator praising them for reaching their goals!
Teacher Engagement report
The Teacher Engagement report shows you how teachers are engaging with IXL across your school or district, and provides actionable next steps to help boost usage. Broken down into four stages of implementation, you can use the strategies and tools in this report to encourage teachers to regularly use IXL Analytics and skills.
Get inspired by the IXL community
Find out how school districts around the country use IXL to support their students and teachers.
Tucson Unified School District
Hear Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo as he discusses how IXL is integral to the success of TUSD’s 86 schools and 41,000 students.
Johnson City Schools
Find out how Johnson City Schools, TN use IXL to provide equitable high quality education for all 8,000 students across 13 schools.
The School District of Oconee County
Oconee County administrators leverage IXL to make informed instructional decisions for 10,550 K-12 students across 16 schools.
For more stories about IXL implementation success check out our case studies. You can filter stories by subject, grade level, and more.
If you’re still looking for ways to increase IXL usage in your school, visit the Admin Resource Center where you’ll find additional tips and strategies for a successful IXL implementation.
