Content Area / ELA / Math · August 31, 2022

Focused and Targeted Instruction Using NWEA Scores with Khan Academy Math

With NWEA testing upon us, you may be wondering how you can best utilize NWEA data in meaningful ways through targeted and focused classroom instruction. NWEA MAP data is powerful and can be put to great use to accelerate student learning and Khan Academy offers personalized math practice using NWEA scores.

Khan Academy is a free web and app-based platform that offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and personalized learning that allows learners to study at their own pace both inside and outside the classroom.  Khan offers courses in math, science, computing, and more for all grade levels. New to Khan Academy? Learn more in the Khan for Educators course to get started. 

Khan Academy Math Practice: Grades 2+

Khan Academy offers MAP Recommended Practice (also known as Mappers) to provide personalized math practice for students based on their NWEA MAP scores.  Students can input their own scores, or the teacher can set up student scores themselves.  

To use NWEA MAP Test scores to generate personalized study recommendations, students or teachers need information from the Student Progress Report within NWEA (see image below). You can decide if students will enter their data in Khan Academy, or if you, the teacher, will.  

Use the Student Progress Report in NWEA to access student data.

Student Score Entry

Students can input their scores by themselves by visiting the MAP Recommended Practice homepage and completing the parts in the “You” section.  Students will follow these steps:

  1. Use the dropdown menu to select the test you’ll input the scores from (Mathematics 2-5 or Mathematics 6+).
  2. Use the MAP score report (see above photo) to determine the correct value for each topic area and input in the four areas.
  3. Click on the button “Show me the recommendations!” button to receive personalized recommendations to practice for each topic area.
  4. Each link will take the student directly to activities aligned with the skills needed to improve performance in the topic area. 
Students follow these steps to enter their own NWEA data in Khan Academy.

Teacher Score Entry

Teachers wanting to bypass students entering their own scores can input the data themselves by following these directions:

  1. Scroll past the “You” (student) section on the MAP Recommended Practice homepage and go to “Your students.”
  2. Click on “Filter students by class” to open a dropdown menu and select a class.
  3. Enter your students’ RIT scores using the MAP score report (see above photo) to determine the correct value for each topic area and input in the four areas for each student listed in your class. 
  4. Click on the button “Show me the recommendations!” button to generate a customized playlist of math skills for each student.
Teachers follow these steps to enter NWEA data in Khan Academy for their students.

Recommended Practice

Whether the student or teacher enters the data, in order to use MAP Recommended Practice, students will need to go to khanacademy.org/mappers. Teachers will also need to visit this same site to monitor progress.  

When students have taken the NWEA test again, the recommendations can be updated. The teacher or student simply enter the new scores by clicking on “Enter new scores” on the Map Recommended Practice homepage.

Grades K-1 are not included in the MAP Recommended Practice at this time.  Khan Kids, however, includes thousands of activities and books for students ages 2-8. 

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