Stop Mastery Challenge from advancing too fast?

Hello John! My name is Lisa Krueger and I am a Khan Academy Ambassador teaching in Chicago. You can achieve more control 2 ways:

1. Use the recommendation feature on the Skill Progress tab then choose the skill next click +Recommend to the students that need practice then click Recommend to students.

2. Instruct students to click the x to close the Master Challenge and simply work the skills in the order presented. (Ex. below)

Thanks for the response Lisa.

I regularly add skills to get my kids to work things in the order I want them to, the problem arises when mastery challenges, which they have to use to get to mastered, pulls in topics from "not started".  Let me give an example...

My seven year old boy has recently begun working 3rd grade, he had several topics at paracticed, L1 & L2, so went into mastery challenge to level them up.  He had not started multiply by 8, but amongst the questions asked was 2 times 8, being comfortable with doubling he got the right answer. When the results of the mastery challenge came up it showed multiply by 8 had moved from needs practice to level one, but he hasn't begun learning 8 times.  Next time it came up in mastery it was mutiply by something he didn't know and he got it wrong, down to "practised", then wrong in the next mastery and it was down to "needs practice".  But this wasn't an end to it.  In the next mastery challenge he got 5 times 8, well he knows his five times and understands the commutative nature of multiplication, so got it right and it is back at level one!

This is not the only skill that this is happening with.  It seems that the sytem is using mastery challenges as a partial mission warm up and trying him on some things he hasn't learned yet.

Ideally I would like to be able to select a setting where mastery will only ask questions from the skills that are at practised or higher.  I would also like to be able to get rid of the mission warm ups, they are good for someone coming into Khan that doesn't know quite where to begin working, but when moving up from the previous mission can lead to premature advancement.

Hello John! I understand your concern. I was under the impression that the Mastery Challenge only covered concepts already practiced. I will bring this issue up to the KA developers. Thank you for posting and for clarifying your concerns. I will update when I have news.