Content update: Upcoming restructuring to reading and vocab courses

We’ve made some important updates to Khan Academy’s reading and vocab courses for grades 4–10.

These changes are designed to make it easier for teachers to quickly identify and assign targeted skills practice and instructional resources in the reimagined Khan Academy Classroom experience.

This update is part of Khan Academy’s 2026 back-to-school content rollout. You can view the full BTS 2026 content overview here.

Grammar units have been integrated into 5th–10th grade reading and vocab courses

We want to make it simple for you to assign all the ELA practice your students need. So we’ve integrated grade-level grammar units into our existing 5th–10th grade reading and vocab courses. With just a few clicks, you can assign practice in all three domains: reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary at one time. Assign all the lessons at once or focus on just the skills your students most need to practice.

This is the same rigorous, standards-aligned grammar practice that you’ll find in our stand-alone grammar courses, now also integrated into our reading courses so you can find all the ELA practice you need in one place.

You’ll also notice that our ELA courses have been renamed to reflect the breadth of skills coverage:

Unit names now focus on skills

In our 4th–10th grade ELA courses, reading comprehension units are now organized around Common Core-aligned skill groups:

Key ideas and details
Craft and structure
Integration of knowledge and ideas

Previously, units focused on broader themes. The new naming structure is designed to make it easier to quickly identify the skills covered in a unit.

Articles have been renamed

Our ELA articles provide instruction, modeling, and opportunities for low-stakes practice. These resources follow an “I do / we do / you do” instructional model and can be used independently by students or as part of whole-class or small-group instruction.

To help teachers and students better understand the content of the articles, they now use this naming format:

Skill name | Guided practice

For example:

Making inferences → Making inferences | Guided practice

Vocabulary instruction is moving into separate units

For grades 4–10, vocabulary practice is being moved into stand-alone vocabulary units at the beginning of the course, rather than being embedded within reading comprehension units. This change is intended to give teachers more flexibility around when or if to assign vocabulary practice.

These new vocabulary units will cover both high-frequency, high-utility grade-level words and transferable skills like using context clues, roots, and affixes to determine word meanings.

We recommend that learners complete the vocabulary unit before beginning reading units, so students can review strategies that will help them determine the meanings of unfamiliar words in reading passages. Students will also see many of these useful vocab words in the reading passages in the rest of the course.

If you want to dive straight into reading, however, go ahead! In the 5th–10th grade courses, students will encounter the same transferable vocabulary skills in a later Word Study unit.

Will this affect mastery progress?

Khan Academy’s 5th–10th grade reading, grammar, and vocab courses will now include dozens of new grammar lessons and over 70 new grammar practice exercises per course. We’ve also added a new vocabulary exercise to the 7th–10th grade courses.

While these changes will significantly affect mastery progress, we believe they will make the courses much easier to use in the reimagined Khan Academy Classroom experience.

Why are these changes being made?

Based on feedback from teachers, these updates are intended to make Khan Academy’s ELA courses easier to use in classrooms and easier to align with existing curriculum and coursework.

The updated structure is designed to help teachers:

quickly identify relevant skills practice
assign targeted instruction more easily
use vocabulary practice more flexibly

We’ll continue monitoring feedback as these updates roll out.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out.

What’s coming next for Khan Academy ELA?

We’re creating even more practice exercises for reading skills in 7th–10th grade! Stay tuned!

Official comment

Alex G

May 22, 2026 17:20

Hi Bristlefrost and G. Tarun!

Thanks for your comments and questions!

I'm glad you enjoy the new format and the mastery changes. We strive to communicate those as quickly as possible. This summer, I'll be announcing additional course revisions, often a few weeks before they launch.

When I make the announcement, it won't include any potential mastery changes. However, once the revision is published and live, I will be able to include that information.

Regarding Math Essentials, keep an eye out for an announcement that will address your questions!

Bristlefrost

May 21, 2026 20:44
Edited

Thanks for the heads up on the mastery percentage changes! I think it is helpful to know ahead of time that a slight drop is just due to new exercises being added not me losing progress. I really like the new "Skill name | Guided practice" format for the articles. It makes it much clearer for me to know what I am about to practice before I click on the link. :)

Thank you for what you and the rest of the KA team do! We appreciate it :)

G. Tarun

May 22, 2026 15:52
Edited

Hi! Thanks for the update on updates. I'm curious what Math Essentials courses will include, and how they'll relate to Get Ready courses.

Science in the Indian curriculum actually has these foundations, revision, and Essentials courses - similar Get Ready Science courses for the global curriculum also would be helpful, incorporating India and global, and NGSS/AP contents.

May 22, 2026 15:55

Also, now that Vocabulary has a separate unit, I'm curious if the team can make a bonus curated course with ALL the vocabulary units across grades, for a vocabulary compilation just like Grammar. It's not exhaustive of course and building vocabulary is an ongoing practice integrated into language use and learning. But it's still hopefully useful for lifelong learners.

May 22, 2026 20:42
Edited

Thanks @Alex G! I am keeping an eye on the BTS 2026 article, and wonder what kinds of updates World History, SAT, and Careers will get.

Is there a way to get notified of updates to that post after clicking follow? I seem not to receive any.

As others have shared in the support community, a streamlined channel for sharing these content and other important updates would be helpful - support community, blog could perhaps be integrated or just support could focus on these platform updates, etc. Or email notifications about these updates that people can opt in or out of in settings.

These are of course some thoughts on how these updates can be shared, and in a way that takes into consideration user feedback and suggestions. Looking forward to the updates.

JaniceHolz

August 20, 2026 07:28

It looks like you edited the article 11 hours ago; could you summarize what changes were made so busy teachers don't have to read all 693 words if they already read the article before and you just corrected a typo or something?