Hi, ELA educators! I’m Heather, a former middle school teacher and current content creator here at Khan Academy.
I’m excited to share five ways you can use our new, standards-aligned 4th–10th grade ELA courses to support student learning in your classroom.
1. Build test-ready readers with weekly spiral review.
At Khan Academy, we design our ELA practice to mirror the rigor and question types students will encounter on state assessments.
A simple way to prepare students without overloading them is to assign one Khan Academy ELA lesson each week.
This keeps key reading and vocabulary skills fresh all spring long and works beautifully while you pull small groups or confer with individual learners.
Plus, bonus reading-strategy articles for grades 4–8 and test-taking-strategy articles for grades 9–10 get students ready to tackle any assessment that comes their way.
Top tip: Research shows students learn more deeply when they write by hand. Try our printable note-taking template, or use the editable digital version.
2. Unlock richer class discussion by flipping your ELA lessons.
Our ELA articles and videos are intentionally short, engaging, and designed to teach one clear, transferable reading strategy at a time.
Try assigning a Khan Academy lesson for homework before introducing a skill or text in class.
You’ll walk into class with:
- A snapshot of what students already understand
- A clearer sense of who needs extra support
- More time for meaningful, text-based activities and discussions
Students walk in ready to annotate, analyze, debate, and write.
3. Use high-interest passages to spark debate and deep thinking.
Khan Academy’s long-passage practice includes:
📚 Popular and classic literary texts like To Kill a Mockingbird
📰 High-interest informational texts like “Can video games teach survival skills?”
Use the built-in questions to ground comprehension, then go deeper with:
- whole-class discussions,
- text-based debates,
- argument writing, and
- small-group analysis,
Our pro/con articles—like “Should We Have Zoos?”—are especially helpful for teaching argumentative writing and evidence-based reasoning.
4. Turn ELA practice into a game students will actually love.
Engaging students in ELA lessons can be tough—but it doesn’t have to be.
Take Khan Academy ELA questions and turn them into quick, energetic games, like this one:
ELA Basketball 🏀
- Put students into groups of four. Give each group a small whiteboard.
- Project a Khan Academy exercise question.
- Give groups time to answer and to justify their reasoning.
- Correct answer = they shoot a basket.
- Strong explanation = bonus shot.
- Points given for each basket they make!
- Have students rotate who is writing within their group and repeat the process with a new question.
It’s simple, lively, and packed with reading, reasoning, and collaboration.
5. Use Khan Academy ELA for stations, small groups, and independent work.
Khan Academy ELA fits smoothly into:
- Small-group instruction
- Independent practice
- Reading workshop rotations
- Intervention blocks
- Homework or enrichment
- Early-finisher activities
Because lessons are bite-sized, skill-focused, and engaging, you can use them flexibly—wherever your classroom needs them most.
Tell us how you’re using Khan Academy ELA!
Teachers are endlessly creative—we love seeing how you adapt tools for your classrooms. Share your ideas with us at social@khanacademy.org. You might inspire a future blog post!
Thanks for everything you do to help students grow as readers and writers. 💙
