At Longcroft School in Beverley, Lexia has been supporting literacy intervention since 2017. In this month’s interview, teaching assistants Lesley Walker and Pam Fleming detail how implementing Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® has unlocked academic potential from KS3 to KS4, and how the adaptive learning model supports EAL students.
How did you first come across the Lexia Program?
Pam: Lexia was first introduced to our secondary school in 2017 by our SENCO at the time, through our partner trust. It was set up by Lesley and another TA.
Lesley: We started by using it during tutor time in the mornings and afternoons. By 2018, we’d created a nurture group who used it much more.
Pam: I think that’s where we began to see real progress as they were accessing daily. Those students had regular access to the programme, unlike some others who only used it in short tutor slots. Over time, we realised how powerful it was and now we use it regularly – it’s brilliant!
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Pam: For us, it’s easily accessible and promotes independent learning. When the students sit the initial placement test, they start at their own level, and from there they can clearly see their progress from where they started. It’s just amazing!
It’s also something that works well across year groups. We use it from Year 7 through to Year 10, and students enjoy the competitive side of it too.
Lesley: They like getting streaks! You’ll often hear pupils comparing how many streaks they’ve got, which really motivates them. We often hear a commentary from the pupils about who has the biggest streak!
Students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) do great with it too. We have seen lots of progress from them. This really shines in their English lessons, especially since some students start with very little English.
Pam: They are taking control and setting their own work, and they find it fun. I think it’s also the fact that it is on the computer, and it is independent. We are a school that promotes independent learning, and Lexia is student-driven but we are still there to step in when needed.
How is Lexia used in school?
Pam: We use it during registration time. Each year group has one registration slot in the morning, and they also have one full hour lesson of Lexia a week. We identify the pupils through our STAR testing, who are usually the bottom 20% of readers.
Once they’ve been on the programme for a while, we look at their progress. It’s built into the classrooms and overseen by a member of the senior leadership team, who keeps an eye on all the data. We’ll take some students off and put others on depending on how they’re progressing.
Because we’re now getting the minutes in and they’re using it regularly, we can really see how much progress they’re making compared with when we first started using Lexia.
Lesley: We also use it to support English lessons as well. When they’ve got an English literacy lesson, the pupils who are on Lexia come out to us to do their session, while the others stay in the classroom and work with the teacher.
What impact has Lexia had on your pupils?
Lesley: According to the data we’ve have received recently, some of the students have gone up by two year groups with their reading ability, so it is having an impact. We’ve looked at the STAR results across the year and made comparisons, and we’ve even used some GL data at the end of the year. Using different types of data to analyse, we can see they are making good progress.
Pam: Some of the teachers have also said they’ve seen an impact in the classroom in their writing, spelling and grammar, an even just in retrieving information from texts. They can see a difference themselves.
Lesley: I think they’re picking up a lot of decoding skills as well from using the programme, and that helps going forward. If they start on it in Year 7 and are still using it in Year 10, then by the time they get to Year 11 they should be able to decode all the texts they’ll face in their GCSEs.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Lesley: I would say some of our nurture group pupils have really stood out. If you look back at their archived data, you’ll see big green ticks showing they’d completed everything in areas like comprehension. They went on to sit their GCSEs and did well, which was brilliant to see. They definitely shone for me!
Pam: I would echo Lesley as I can think of a few pupils in the nurture group that achieved in the same way. Currently we have an EAL student who joined without speaking a word of English. We started her on Core5, because the graphics were a bit more supportive for her, but we’ve just now moved her onto PowerUp. She’s flying now! We can see a huge difference in her progress.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Lesley: I tend to print the certificates off every week, and we’ve given them out in assemblies before. We also hand them out in lessons when students come in. They’ll say, “Oh, we’ve got certificates today,” and they’re really happy to receive them. Even the Year 10s have been given them, and you still see a smile on their faces, which is quite surprising given they’re in the higher year groups.
Pam: We also share progress with parents. At parents’ evenings we’ll show them how their child is doing and celebrate with them as well, and information will go home to parents. We encourage parents to be positive with the pupils and celebrate how well they’re doing.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Pam: We print the data , and we analyse it alongside all the other testing we do in school. And to be fair, Lexia does come out a little bit better. Comparing the STAR testing from when they started to what we’re doing now with Lexia, you can see the difference.
Lesley: Our senior leadership team also get the data. We give them the printouts and one of them even did a presentation to the wider leadership team about how good Lexia is – so it’s being promoted at that level as well.
Pam: When it generates the Lesson Plan, its me and Lesley who deliver them. The reports show us the areas where students are struggling the most and we will let teachers know, then they can also implement that support in the classroom as well.
We use the lessons and paper-based resources quite a lot too. If we don’t have a computer room available, we can print the lessons and Skill Builders off for the session, so no learning gets missed.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
Pam: The main thing is to make sure pupils are getting their minutes. It’s important that they are getting their full time on the programme because that’s when you see the biggest impact.
Lesley: In the early days, it can be hard because pupils don’t always want to leave their English lesson or their friends. It takes perseverance. But once you get into the routine and they start receiving certificates, they see the rewards and that makes all the difference.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Pam: We did a survey recently and the feedback was very positive. Pupils said they enjoyed coming to the Lexia sessions and that they like how they could clearly see their progress and see that visual of their success. The like that it is computer-based as well. Overall, we have had some really positive feedback from both students and their parents.
Parents have also given strong feedback, sometimes even phoning us to ask about Lexia and how it works.
Lesley: Parents have also encouraged their children to use it over the summer holidays and we have been able to give them access to the program at home.
Finally, if you could describe Lexia in 3 words, what 3 words would you use?
Interactive, motivating and rewarding.
Our Star School for September is…
Pakefield High School, Suffolk!
At Pakefield High School, Lexia is helping students build confidence and make real progress in literacy. In this interview, Jess Harvey, Teaching Assistant and Lexia Coordinator, shares how the school has embedded Lexia into their intervention strategy, the impact on student motivation, and why it stands out as a valuable tool for reading development.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
We had a school within our MAT that was already using Lexia. We received an email about it, so we spoke with the other schools to see how they had found the programme. After hearing their feedback, we decided to give it a try. The final decision came after the trial, as we felt it was the best intervention we could implement for English in our school.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
We love that it’s online, it’s interactive, and it interests the children. It’s different from traditional classroom learning; they’re not just sitting with a piece of paper. We love that it’s independent, it’s tailored to each and every student, and it encourages that independent learning.
How is Lexia used in your school? Please provide details of your daily routine and how you ensure that you reach recommended usage as well as which pupils use the program in school.
In terms of identifying students, we were already running phonics and spelling interventions, as well as STAR reading tests. So, we took the students who were already receiving those interventions or had been identified as having a lower reading age. We then spoke with class teachers to get their feedback and see if any other students stood out as needing extra support.
During the transition period, especially with new Year 7s coming in, we assess those students, and if they need intervention, we make sure they’re placed on it.
As for how we use Lexia in our school, we run it in different ways. We have form-time interventions, which are about half an hour in the morning with groups of up to 20 children. We also run sessions throughout the week for groups of 15 to 20 students, which is where we tend to support a lot of our lower-ability students.
In addition, we have Period 6 sessions, two 45-minute sessions for our older students in Years 10 and 11.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy?
Oh, absolutely. We’ve definitely seen an improvement with teenagers, especially in their confidence. Students are able to check their progress and see how far they’ve come, from where they started to where they are now.
It’s great to see those moments where they say, ‘Look, Miss, I’ve completed this level!’ or ‘I’ve powered up!’, it’s really beneficial. It’s lovely to see them gain that self-confidence after a Lexia session.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Yes, we actually had a student with a low reading age, and from the trial to where they are now, they’ve made huge progress. Their reading ability has really improved, and their confidence has grown massively.
With their GCSEs coming up, they now feel much more positive, like, ‘I do know this, I can do this.’ So yeah, it’s made a real difference.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Yeah, so we use the Lexia resources, like certificates, at the end of every half term. We also hold assemblies where we recognise students’ achievements.
We’ll purchase small gifts for students who have really stood out, whether they’ve worked hard in a tricky area like grammar, word study, or comprehension, or if they’ve completed a large number of units and put in extra effort, including using Lexia at home. We nominate those students for a reward, which is really beneficial.
There’s definitely some healthy competition across all year groups. They really want that reward!
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
They’re really useful! Great for tracking the progress students are making. We do weekly check-ins to see how they’re getting on, how many units they’ve completed, and whether they might need a bit of extra support.
It’s also brilliant to share this data with other staff during meetings and compare it with other interventions we’re using in school. So, it’s really beneficial.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
I would say get as many staff involved as possible in implementing it. I have several other TAs who run sessions alongside me, and we also have accounts for the headteacher and English teachers so they can access reports and track progress.
I’d definitely recommend making sure all staff can engage with it. And just give it time. Progress doesn’t happen overnight, but with consistency, you’ll see the results.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
They love the reward system, especially that end-of-half-term moment when they receive their reward and see how many certificates they’ve accumulated over the half-term. And of course, they love the bigger rewards, like an Easter egg when Easter is coming up.
They also really like being able to check their progress at the end of each session. That’s something we make sure to do. We review how many units they’ve completed, and if they’re struggling, we can step in with extra support. They know they’ll get that help from us.
And they love the high score streaks too! They like seeing how many correct answers they’ve got in a row!
Is there anything else you would like to add regarding why you think Lexia has been a success in your school?
I think for our students, especially boys, interventions can be a big hurdle. But Lexia is interactive, fun and, well, I want to say ‘cool’! It’s definitely not your typical intervention!
What stands out is that it’s tailor-made for each student. It’s suited to them, at the right level, and they’re progressing as they should be.
Finally, if you could describe Lexia in 3 words, what 3 words would you use?
I would say it’s personalised, targeted and enjoyable.
Our Star School for May is…
Launceston College, Cornwall!
We spoke to Zoe Brundell, English Teacher and Attainment & Intervention Lead, who shared how Launceston has embedded Lexia PowerUp Literacy into the timetable and created a culture of praise that keeps students motivated and on track.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
So we’ve had it for several years actually, but for a while, we weren’t really doing that much with it.
Then we decided maybe two or three years ago to give it a good go and in the last two, we’ve managed to convince leadership to dedicate the time needed to the programme to make it work.
We really liked the fact that it was student friendly. It’s not pitched too high and it looks like a game to them – so it’s fun! Since we’ve managed to convince everyone that it’s worth spending the time on the timetable, it’s taken off!
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Firstly, the ease of use. The students can use it without much supervision. As teachers, we’re in the room giving lots of praise and deliver the skill builders. It’s student friendly – simple and straightforward for them to use by themselves.
It helps us support them with things that they are finding difficult. So when we go in and look at kind of the breakdowns in the back end, you can see where it is that they’re struggling or what they’re maybe of what trying to avoid doing.
It’s also great for just being able to give praise and celebrate those students who maybe don’t get that positive reinforcement as much. Because we award them for all sorts of things to do with Lexia, it’s just such a positive experience for them. They’re improving and they’re getting recognised for it. They’re often students that have struggled and not found much success in other places. So, to see it working with them and having evidence of that on the screen in front of them is really, really helpful and makes them feel good about themselves, their progress and their journey.
How is Lexia used in your school?
We select students to participate Lexia based on their reading age. They take a reading age test each year, and anyone significantly below their chronological age is selected for Lexia.
We timetable it so they have three hours a week on Lexia. Two of their English lessons are dedicated to Lexia, while the other two follow the normal curriculum. They also have one hour taken from their languages lessons—so instead of doing French or Spanish, they spend that time on Lexia as well. Our languages department has been incredibly supportive. They’ve said for a long time that if these students can’t access English properly, they’re going to struggle with French and Spanish too. So, they were keen to get involved and help support them in this way.
We’re very lucky to have those three hours, and it’s great that other departments support it too. It means students can meet a minimum of 90 minutes per week on the programme. Before this, we tried having just one hour in school and expecting them to do the rest at home, but students with lower reading ages often struggled to access it independently, even with incentives. But now, with the extra time and support from across the school, it’s working really well.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils.
Yeah, many of them do make progress in their reading age by the end of the year. We haven’t done this year’s reading age test yet, but every year, we see improvements.
Even just in lessons with my own class, I can definitely see the difference. Their comprehension and decoding skills have improved. In our normal English lessons, we’re currently studying war poetry, and previously, we’ve read Animal Farm and other challenging texts. As the year goes on, they become much better at understanding difficult words and grasping the meaning of what they’re reading.
They struggle less with complex vocabulary because they’ve learned to break words down—looking at prefixes, suffixes, and understanding how words are structured. It’s nice to see that progress as a classroom teacher.
Even without this year’s reading age data, you can see their confidence growing in lessons. That shift in their ability and self-assurance over time is just lovely to see.
The Year 6s, where the format of the previous programme maybe wasn’t as mature for them. So, last year we decided to switch them over to PowerUp, and the difference has been incredible.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
So far this year, we’ve actually had a couple of students who have already completed the whole programme and have been moved up sets. That was awesome, and amazing for them to see their own progress.
One of my Year 9s, in particular, has struggled with reading for a long time. He used to find it really difficult to get high streaks. As you know, streaks show when they’re getting consecutive answers right, and we reward students for streaks of 25 or more. He would often say, “Oh, I was almost there, but I lost it.”
But now, he’s frequently getting streaks in the hundreds! It’s been amazing to see his confidence grow—to see him getting more and more questions right and holding onto those streaks. From the start of the year to now, the progress is incredible.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
We have these little praise postcards where we can write a message on the back, and they’re worth five praise points in our school system. Students get one of these if they manage to reach a streak of 25 or more during a lesson.
Sometimes, I turn it into a bit of a competition—who can get the highest streak in the lesson. It can get a little boisterous, but since it’s all about the work, that’s always a good thing!
After my implementation review the other day with LexiaUK, we’ve just introduced praise for units gained in a lesson as well. Now, whoever gains the most units in a lesson also gets a praise postcard. This has really encouraged students to stick with sections they find difficult. Before, they would sometimes jump between different sections to avoid getting stuck, but now they stay focused because they want to earn their praise postcards.
We also track how many minutes they complete each week. I export all the data, put it into a spreadsheet, and an admin assistant sends emails home. The top three students with the most minutes get a message congratulating them on their effort. We make it as encouraging and rewarding as we can.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
I usually use it to track minutes and make sure students are meeting the minimum of 90, because we know that if they reach that target, they’ll make the progress they need.
We also use it to monitor where they are in terms of progressing through the levels—from Foundation to Intermediate to Advanced—and to keep an eye on who’s close to finishing sections.
In the future, we hope to make more use of the Skill Builders and instructional resources that are generated. That’s something I’m working towards—maybe having a reading mentor or someone else in the room who could take a smaller group and focus on Skill Builders or targeted instruction. While we’d like to use the resources more, for now, we mainly focus on tracking progress through levels and ensuring students complete the minutes they need. Hopefully, we can expand this in the future.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
The biggest thing is just praise—constant praise for anything and everything you can. If you can get students on board and excited about it, everything becomes so much easier.
The other key thing is making sure that everyone in the school understands the importance of reading. We’re very lucky here at Launceton because reading is a whole-school priority. We do lots of different things to promote it, like tutor reading in the mornings, so it’s a school-wide initiative. That’s made it much easier for me to get everyone on board with Lexia.
If you can create that culture, it helps secure time for students to actually use the programme. Without dedicated time, it just doesn’t work.
And finally, make sure those minutes are happening in school, ideally with support from the whole staff. If everyone recognises that reading and literacy are essential, and that this programme will support those skills, it makes a huge difference.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
A lot of them have said it’s helped build their confidence. They feel more confident in class, more confident when reading, and more confident that they understand what’s happening when we read together. That’s always lovely to hear.
Some have said, “I understand more of what I’ve read,” or “I get why sentences are structured the way they are.”
And then, of course, a lot of them just say, “I really like it. It’s fun. I like seeing my streak. I like that I’m beating someone’s streak. I like winning my postcard.”
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I think the key over the last couple of years has been having backing from everyone across the college—our languages teachers, our senior leadership team—all working together to implement Lexia in the way we have.
That support has made the biggest difference, not just for the students, but for us as Lexia teachers and for me as a Lexia lead. Without it, we were struggling because we didn’t have the dedicated time, and the students weren’t always completing it at home independently. Not every child has the same level of access or support at home.
Knowing that we’re all working together has been the biggest factor in boosting Lexia attainment. You can see from everything we’ve achieved this year just how much of a difference it has made.
I’m grateful to everyone in the school for supporting the programme and, most importantly, for supporting our students. As we all know, GCSE papers require a reading age of 15+, so without these interventions, we would be letting our students down.
So, I’m just incredibly grateful to everyone for making the most of the time our students have with us and ensuring they get the support they need.
Finally, if you could describe Lexia in 3 words, what 3 words would you use?
I would say impactful, engaging, and, due to the fact that it gives me data on student progress, insightful.
Our Star School for November is…
The Compton School, London!
We had the pleasure of speaking with Emily Walker-Nolan, Assistant Head, and Deeya Sharma, Lexia Lead. They shared valuable insights on how starting Lexia early with their Year 7 intake has significantly enhanced literacy outcomes and fostered strong engagement with the program.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
Emily: About 4 years ago, I put in a school development bid with the local authority for some of their post-covid funding. I decided to write something about the whole school reading strategy and Lexia was part of that tool kit. It was a three-tier approach; so there was a whole school approach that looked at the development of staff, making sure that every teacher was a teacher of literacy and reading.
Being a secondary school, we made sure that teachers understand how children learn to read and the specific barriers that they might have with their reading. Lexia was to be part of our targeted support following the screening of our young people. We wanted to have a licence at Key Stage 3 for our bottom 20% of readers as a catch-all to run alongside other interventions that we run as a school.
We have daily phonics instruction here at secondary level and paired reading for fluency practice and we call Lexia our ‘tutor in a computer’. It’s our way of making sure that the young people that aren’t getting one to one intervention or they just need a little bit of support, are getting a bit of extra help closing those foundational reading gaps.
We introduced it with 60 licenses, and we liked it so much that, in the second year of the strategy, we then purchased 120 licenses. We now have three trust schools that have Lexia and that all started with us here at Compton. It’s great!
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Emily: I think that because it’s an adaptive programme and it’s bespoke to the needs of the particular student. I think that that’s a big sell for us in terms of making sure that the students are getting the correct level of instruction, making sure that they’re closing the specific gaps that they have in all areas of reading. That’s an excellent part of the programme. I think another part of it is the gamification.
Deeya: Yes, since the start of term, we’ve had a couple of weeks with Year 7 now, they have been really competitive with keeping up streaks! They come to tell me about their high streaks and it’s a real treat for them to be able to compete with their friends and get a high score. They also keep track of it themselves and show me and their other teachers what they have achieved. It’s a real sense of achievement for them!
How is Lexia used in your school?
Emily: Lexia forms an in integral part of our Year 6 transition. We’re relatively stable in terms of student intake so we get students to take their CAT test early. So, the prospective Year 6 pupils come in around May to do their CAT which is much earlier than our other schools. We then use the Verbal Reasoning Score and start to have a look at data before they even do their SATs to identify if they could have some reading barriers.
In the summer term, after they have had their induction day, we invite usually around 50 students who will make up our new Year 7 cohort, and their parents, into school for an afternoon. The young people will go and do their Lexia Auto Placement test, and we will speak to the parents to get them on board with the program and what to can do. This is to avoid the ‘summer slide’ and ensure that there are no gaps even before even start secondary school and that the parents buy into our school ethos of reading.
We give each of these students a Lexia licence and give them the ambitious project of who can do the most minutes over the summer holidays. The winner gets a £10 Amazon voucher. They just love it and they go wild for it! In fact, in previous years, we’ve have children actually graduate and finish the program even before they start secondary school! It’s great for the students because they have been successful in an area they potentially haven’t been before and then we can reuse the license with another student which supports us financially as a school. It’s really powerful!
A good thing about the program is that it is a finite program so the students don’t feel they are chipping away at an endless task. Some interventions can feel quite arduous but the fact that there is an end goal with Lexia, its quite motivating for the students.
After the Year 6 transition, we then do our more forensic screening to make sure we’ve got the right children. At the moment we heavily load Year 7 so we are probably going to use about 70 of our licenses in Year 7.
Last year, we created a Lexia Lead position who is the head of Lexia and we run a breakfast club because we found that the children we were targeting were getting quite dysregulated at the end of the day. We found that Year 7 parents were more keen to drop their children to school a little earlier and the turnout have been very positive. They can come, have a biscuit, they can do half an hour on Lexia and it means that they have already achieved 30 minutes of their Lexia time.
We also have 30 minutes of personal development time (PDT) at 10:30. Once a week, they come out of one of their personal development times and they are with Deeya in the computer room, completing Lexia for another 30 minutes. We target each student to do 90 minutes a week, so it means that we’ve given them an hour to build up their minutes and they only have to do 30 minutes in their own time.
Having it structured in this way means we can be supportive in giving them this time. Deeya then also has protected time on her timetable to do interventions so the young people are withdrawn during this time to complete interventions.
Deeya: They are motivated to do well. During the breakfast clubs and the PDT, I give them highest streaks rewards like chocolates and postcards, so that also helps with their motivation. During the PDT, I will have a look at the minutes that they have achieved in the past week and multiple students are getting above 200 minutes in the week which is incredible! They are so motivated to achieve a high number of minutes each week.
We also have Lexia prefects in Year 11 who come and help in the sessions during PDT that are incredibly supportive. They help with giving out headphones and making sure that the biscuits are given out while I take the register. They help make that session run smoothly. The students come in and sit down immediately. They genuinely enjoy it.
Have you noticed a positive change in your pupils motivation to succeed in literacy?
Emily: Lexia forms part of a very broad package of support that we offer. We had our reading meeting this week and there are 8 or 9 of us around a table sharing information and Lexia forms one critical part of that. For me, it’s a safety net. It catches everybody regardless of whatever other interventions are happening.
At the start of the year, I review the data and I can clearly see a correlation between a child’s engagement with Lexia, the minutes and units gained, and the reading progress over the year. There are several case studies that we have had within our school, particularly with disadvantaged students, with one student making nearly 4 years progress in her reading age!
In terms of SEN outcomes as well; very strong. I think as a school we have had a 20% uplift in students reaching the expected benchmark for reading last year as a result of the suite of interventions, including Lexia, we have put in place.
I think for me, as a leader, I don’t teach Key Stage 3 that much, but of those 60-70 target students in Year 7, I know them really well because of Lexia. Because they have had that licence and we’ve had those interactions, I know their reading profile and where they placed in the Auto Placement. It’s powerful as a leader. There is a lot of positive impact.
We find that a lot of readers may be positioned as potentially having quite low motivation from never being successful with reading. We position them as the most successful people in the room. It’s often the weakest readers that have bought into it. It’s accessible. So, for the first time in potentially across all of primary school and into secondary school, they are successful at something that they haven’t been successful at before, and that’s incredibly motivating! You can start to see those sparks on intrinsic motivation starting now.
Deeya: I am a Year 7 form tutor and teacher of a different Year 7 class, so I have lots of positive interactions with Year 7. Having those students pass me in the corridor or in the playground, they will ask me ‘Do we have Lexia today?’, even if it is not our timetabled Lexia day. I have been very impressed with the continuous motivation that they want to do Lexia outside of school.
They will come up to me and tell me that they are trying to beat their highest streak or pass their highest number of minutes. It’s had a very positive impact on their motivation. I’ve even had a few students ask me if they can join Lexia just because they have heard about the positive impact of it from their friends. I don’t think the students view it as an intervention and I think it’s to do with the way that it is packaged.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Emily: We have had one young man who was in our first cohort of Lexia and he was placed in the foundational level for every stand. He graduated from Lexia at the end of last year. He is on the SEN register and has additional needs and ASD but Lexia was a safe and structured part of his day. It really supported him with his reading and feeling successful in this area. Now that he’s finished the program and in Key Stage 4, he saying to me that he wishes that he could do Lexia again and he misses that part of his day.
I think, particularly for children with additional needs, it provides that routine, that structure, that safety and that success. I think that’s extremely helpful for him.
Deeya: We have just started the Year 7 cohort for this year and some of the students started off a bit unsure about the program. Now we are a few weeks in, they are so positive around it. They are coming to breakfast club and additional sessions in the middle of the day, they are completing sessions and home and getting certificates already. I think that positive turn around bodes well for the end of the year where we will probably have some more success stories to share!
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Emily: We have a rewards pyramid structure. First, we have weekly rewards such as a biscuit for being logged in with your headphones on and, when the student achieve over 90 minutes, they will get a chocolate. We also give out Lexia postcards and prizes and positive praise, making sure that the students are praised across the school.
We then have termly awards, like last year, when we noticed that the students were completing a lot of using in the Word Study and Comprehension strands but the Grammar units were behind anything else. So, we had a Grammar challenge over the holidays and the person that completed the most Grammar units over the half term holidays won a £20 Amazon voucher.
We normally set them for the holidays because we want the children to keep practising over the break and it’s a great way to connect with home. We saw a massive uplift in the students completing Grammar units and the prize was given out in assembly. It’s a win-win! We have a few termly initiatives like this, usually a £10-20 Amazon voucher and, if students complete 1000 minutes over the term, they are entered into a raffle.
We also have end of year rewards trips. Last year, we took all our Lexia graduates on a trip to the cinema. It is just around the corner from our school. Tickets only cost around £3 per child so it was fairly cheap but it was motivating for all of them to try and finish the program so they could automatically come. We also took some of our high-engagers too so if you were in the top 30 to either complete the program or to have the most minutes on Lexia, you got to come out of school for the afternoon. We would walk them to the cinema, give them some popcorn and watch the film. It’s a lovely way to end the year and a positive way to celebrate their hard work and effort persisting with something and carrying on. I think its really powerful.
I think it’s that extrinsic motivation that you need to get them to buy in at the beginning. But then, I think they start to see the benefits for themselves. They can position themselves as a better reader. Eventually, you want to move away from the biscuits and postcards and you want them just to feel more positive about reading and to want to read more.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Emily: Reading is the key to the curriculum, and it is very high on the agenda. I will report myLexia data to governors so the governors are aware of Lexia in school. Deeya is superb at communicating progress, particularly with those most critical students, with SLT so that we know who the top achievers are.
Deeya: In the Lexia sessions, I have myLexia open on my computer so I can see each group and their usage and minutes. I sort them from highest to lowest so I can congratulate the high-achievers and then and award their chocolates. Equally, I look at the bottom of the list which can highlight who is not engaging as well. It’s helpful to see and know who to speak to and have conversation about why that might be. Maybe they are lacking motivation or maybe they are not able to access Lexia at home due to a technical issue. It’s important data to see so that I can start the conversation and provide support. We also use the usage reports to see the units and minutes for a custom date range over the summer holidays.
Emily: It’s a particularly useful feature for monitoring engagement. For me, the Skills Status reports are really helpful in terms of measuring impact and who is engaging most across the year. We have also be able to see if Year 7 haven’t been moving forward with Grammar and that has told us we need to do a Grammar challenge. Often, I have it open on my phone and if I’m talking to young people around school I can pull up their name on myLexia and have a look at how many minutes they have done that week and congratulate them. It’s a very user-friendly portal, quite easy to navigate around.
It’s also easy to move licenses in and out and set up classes. I think our next step will be to share the platform with more teachers so they can monitor progress with their classes a little bit more. It’s handy to assign staff to each of their classes so they can see who in their class are engaging with Lexia and what their progress is like.
Deeya: When I do interventions one-to-one with students, its helpful for me to see. I print off the resources so I can have them in front of us when we go through it. The list of who has repeated units and who is struggling is helpful, especially when I see students appearing on it more than once.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
Deeya: I wasn’t involved in the initial set up of Lexia like Emily was, but I think that the running of Lexia over the summer holidays is something that has worked for the cohort this year, especially with starting their engagement in the program early. I think that is something that a school should do if they want to be successful with it and have the cohort be so positive with it: Get started as early as possible.
Emily: If you can’t and you do not know your Year 6’s before they start, I think getting parental engagement and getting the parents on board is really helpful. Get the parents in and get them to look at it. Deeya held an amazing virtual workshop on Zoom for our parents. We sent links to the parents so if they couldn’t come in over the summer holidays, we texted out a link and they could join virtually. We recorded the meeting with all the relevant information like how they could use it, how it worked and the timetabling and all the operational things and then we stopped the recording and had a Q&A. We then emailed that recording to all the parents that couldn’t come so they had all the relevant information. That’s something that all schools could do.
We also had a ‘Welcome to Year 7’ evening this week and we normally have Lexia as part of that. I think parents want something tangible that they can do at home to support them, especially with English. This is something that is tangible. They can see that it’s happening in front of them and that is the way they can support, just by giving them access. I think that’s one way to be successful with the program, by getting that parental buy-in.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Deeya: It’s been overwhelmingly positive. I’m probably sounding repetitive but they just love it. They associate the sessions with so much positivity and warmth and they look forward to coming. Even the students that are hesitating at first to come to the sessions because of the potential stigma around it. I think they have overcome that and now most of Year 7 see the session as very, very positive.
I’ve had a few students ask to join Lexia just because they have heard from their friends about the positive impact of it. That obviously means that it is having a positive impact on their motivation. It’s not seen as an intervention. It’s seen as a group of people who want to succeed and do well.
Our Star School for October is…
Upton-by-Chester High School, Cheshire!
We spoke to Alex Parry, who is the Lexia Coordinator at the school. He told us how Upton High has benefitted from rolling Lexia out to their Year 7 and 8 pupils, and their plans for expanding this into Year 9 this year!
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
Over the last couple of years, we have been looking at completely restructuring our English intervention and offering it to as many learners as possible. We wanted to see how a focus on how the English department could support other core subjects such as maths where low literacy may be restricting access to other areas of the curriculum.
This led to the creation of several different roles in school such as a Literacy Intervention Manager, and me and my colleague Mel who deliver the Literacy interventions. We were looking at how to maximise the involvement of learners and of course, being a school, value for money was very important as well. So that is where Lexia came in.
I fit our idea of independent, student-led progress and addressing very specific areas for learning. Especially in English, not everyone has the same difficulties, it’s a wide variety of things. We were really impressed with the variety that was available to us with Lexia, and for the price as well, we couldn’t believe it. We thought the value for money and what the learners were going to get from it was incomparable from anything else.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
For me, it’s tailor made. It’s student-driven, independent and it’s allowing them to focus on their gaps in their English knowledge. It’s brilliant because, the parts that they are already secure in, they fly through and make lots of progress. They are always really happy to tell me, ‘Sir, Look! I’ve completed 8 units today!’.
When they get to the parts they are finding more difficult, they then come out of it feeling that they have a bit more understanding and are making steps in the right direction towards understanding concepts or key ideas that they weren’t as confident with before. It has been so wonderful to see that kind of progression being made.
How is Lexia used in your school?
Lexia makes up the middle stage of the school’s intervention program which is students that need some support but may not necessarily be the lowest ability in school. We conduct a STAR reader test at the beginning of September, January and April half terms which gives us an indication of reading age.
Anyone who has a reading age of 9 or above, but is still below expected level, goes on Lexia. We currently use the program with Year 7 and 8 and we are looking into expanding this into Year 9 next year. We also use an NGRT to double check our identified students and meet with the Head of Literacy Intervention to come to a consensus on our final Lexia cohort.
Our students complete 2 hours of Lexia per week per class. We currently have 5 Year 7 classes and 4 Year 8 classes so that works out to 18 hours of Lexia per week that I lead. So, each students get 2 hours of focused Lexia time per week with me in school so we can crack on and see what they need. Any remaining time of their usage targets are normally set as homework.
This is all backed by our rewards system in school which is a real strength. Our student love to earn rewards are very eager for it, especially in Year 7.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy?
I mainly look at the data as I am not a classroom teacher. When we have completed our assessments, we have seen improvement time on time. This term and as we were testing them towards the end of the year, we are seeing increases of around 2 years on their reading ages which is incredible. This is the benefit of Lexia if we make it consistent and embed it. Rome wasn’t built in a day and we can’t expect these children to catch up completely in a matter of 4 months. It’s been a steady progress due to the hard work that they have put in and the engagement with the program that they have had, which has enabled them to make these jumps and go up two years in a year. It is so pleasing to see that!
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
There is one lad, in particular, who I am so proud of! He comes in and he works so hard. He is so passionate about working with the Lexia software. When he came in this year, he was just over that 9 years reading age, so he just fell into the range for Lexia.
In his most recent reading test, he has come out above chronological reading age, something like 13.5 years! When I saw that, I was so thrilled for him and he was thrilled as well. He came to us with quite low confidence, which is true for a lot of learners coming to us. It is not necessarily their understanding, it’s their confidence in the application of it.
I think that practice in a low-pressure environment can bring on huge changes. That’s what we saw with this learner in particular. He’s absolutely smashed it! His work, according to his English teacher, has improved at every review stage. We are absolutely thrilled with that.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
We have a competition and first place gets a £10 Amazon Voucher, 2nd Place gets a tub of chocolates and 3rd gets a big chocolate bar. They also have the chance to earn stickers throughout their Lexia time. Every time they compete all their minutes on Word Study, Grammar or Comprehension they get a sticker. They also get another sticker if they complete all 3, so they are able to earn up to 4 stickers for usage.
In addition to this, the person that completes the most units progress gets an additional 2 stickers. So, they all have the opportunity to earn up to 6 stickers a week. We have found this has led to some healthy competition and given them an incentive to complete that extra half-hour at home. This has been very useful for us in continuing to monitor that progress.
We definitely want to reward learners for engaging with Lexia because I think there are times that learners can maybe see it as a negative thing and they may not understand why they need the extra support with reading. For us, it is all about changing that perspective and making intervention a place that they want to come, a place where they can progress and a place where they are celebrated.
I think that the rewards system that we have come up with for Lexia has really helped us achieve this, especially as we have been developing and tweaking it towards the second half of the year. This has led to an increase of engagement with Lexia and we have had engagement at home as well which is also down to the parents’ involvement. Their encouragement of their children to us ethe program at home has been a massive boost.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
The myLexia platform has really been a useful tool in me being able to see progression both in terms of minutes and units gained. With our rewards chart it forces me every week to look at every single learner and see the progress they’ve made. We can identify from that how they’re progressing their needs going forward.
It can also prompt us to have those conversations about their effort and make them aware that we are monitoring them, and we are looking for that progression. It’s been such a useful tool for that. From there, with the extra resources that Lexia provides, the Lexia Lessons to support and the Skill Builders that we give them at the end. They have been so good in allowing us to double check progress and really make certain that they’re on the right track.
With assessments like the STAR Reader test, especially with the test conditions, lots of learners struggle in that environment and you may not see an accurate reflection of their progress. myLexia allows me to get into the nitty gritty without the need for formal testing. I can go to my line manager and show them all the work they have completed on Lexia. It has allowed us a further insight and given us more data to look at and try and get as clear a picture as possible as to where every learner in intervention is.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
Keep on with it! Give it time. If it is a new intervention strategy to you, there is so much to delve into and so many tools that you may not be aware of yet, so I would say to take the time to get your head around it. Likewise with the learners, giving them the time to interact with the software and progress is important. With time, learners can begin to identify the situations and topics that they struggle with and allow them to address them with consistent practice and build those skills up.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
They have really enjoyed the rewards system and the encouragement they get through Lexia. They like the manageability of it and they feel like they have a choice on what to work on. That is really important for a lot of our learners. They love being able to choose and say, ‘I’m not feeling Grammar today, I’ll move over to Comprehension’, they love that because they are not forced down one route, they can take it at their own pace.
The flexibility of it and their ability to break it down into bitesize chunks is so much better. They don’t feel overwhelmed, they are not being hit with 30 or 40 pieces of information and being told to memorise them all. It’s easily digestible which makes it easier for them to retain and they love that.
Do you have any additional comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school?
I think that Lexia has fit so wonderfully with what our vision of how we want our interventions to look like. Lexia has helped us achieve those goals quicker than we would have imagined. It’s been so positive in terms of student engagement and how much they’re enjoying it. It’s been so good for us to see it incorporated in the way it has and that wouldn’t be possible without LexiaUK, with the check-ins that you do.
The support from our SLT has also helped in terms of allowing us to remove learners from lessons twice a week to come and work on Lexia as well as the support from the classroom teachers. I think it’s a testament to the Lexia software that staff have bought in this year and as a school we have all collectively bought into making it work and it wouldn’t be possible without that. So, I cannot thank the school and LexiaUK, with their support, enough.
Our Star School for June is…
Theale Green School, Reading!
We spoke to Rebecca Wilson, a Higher-Level Learning Mentor at the school, who is responsible for running Lexia sessions. In her interview, she shares some fantastic success stories from her pupils and gives us some valuable advice on timetabling and staff training.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
I have been working at Theale Green School in the Inclusion Department for 8 years. Last year, when I was promoted to HLTA and took over literacy support, I noticed that there was a bigger need than I first thought. As a small team, we were unable to cater for as many pupils as we would have liked, and it was a challenge to tailor support to the individual needs of the pupils to the extent that was needed. It was also very difficult for us to track progress of the students with data evidence. I started looking for an online platform that could help us with this.
Our executive SENCO had heard of Lexia, but did not know too much about it, so I looked online to find out more and thought it looked good. I was able to phone up and speak to a Lexia consultant who supported us in setting up a trial at the start of the academic year and we just absolutely loved it! It has really revolutionised the way that we work. We have been able to triple the number of students that we are able to support while still tailoring support to their individual needs.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
We did trial another product to compare but it mainly focused on comprehension skills, and we felt it wasn’t covering all the skills that we needed. There was such a diverse range of skills that we needed to support the ‘COVID hangover’ we are experiencing, the gap has widened and the number of students needing support has increased.
We are seeing an increase in students starting secondary school who are needing support with their phonics. This is something that we have not previously had to deliver, so we needed to either create a whole new programme of learning ourselves or find a program that did it for us and Lexia was the one that met our needs. It had the scope to support our lowest ability students, but still was able to support our higher ability students, who perhaps needed a boost to their self-esteem and confidence. It can also support pupils who have difficulties engaging with their work, as opposed to those that have a big gap in knowledge, so it is something that works on both ends of the scale.
How is Lexia used in your school?
My daily routine is extremely full and busy! I wish I could create many more Lexia groups but, because most of our pupils who are using Lexia are SEND and Pupil Premium, we are keeping the groups quite small. The maximum number of pupils we will have in one Lexia group is 6 students with 2 groups running at a time.
We are lucky to have a small computer suite here in the Inclusion Department, so it is a nice, focused atmosphere. We take our students out of lessons twice a week, so they complete at least 2x 45-minutes sessions each week. Our goal for the future of our Lexia Implementation Plan is to offer a 3rd session to support pupils meeting their usage targets more often.
We have also started a partnership with parents so, in addition to the 2 sessions in school, we will encourage them to do one or two more 30-minute sessions at home over the course of the week. We have also been working with the English department this term who are looking at setting Lexia as one of the English homework activities for Lexia pupils.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils.
There has been a huge shift! When we first introduced the program our students were hesitant about being taken out of their lessons to do literacy. After a few sessions they really warmed to it. Now when I come to the classroom to take some students out to do Lexia, they all ask me if they can come too!
Students are now very positive about it. They really like consistent praise and reward and have thrived as a result.
Claire Lloyd, Theale Green’s Headteacher and Assistant Head SENCO also answered:
Claire: The Lexia programme has been a huge hit with students, parents and staff. We are seeing improvements not just in literacy but with higher self-esteem of students – they go into lessons feeling more positive, no longer seeing unfamiliar text as a barrier to their learning. The students enjoy the choice element, how it is delivered with IT alongside some taught sessions. The students have also loved the certificates and seeing their success as they complete a level.
Parents have been pleased with the flexibility it offers for accessing sessions at home as well as having a clear understanding of how their child is progressing.
Mrs Badarello (Headteacher): Lexia has been a seismic change in terms of how as a school we support students with literacy needs. Students are very positive about it and it has now become the “normal” way of doing things which is incredible. The impact of Lexia was witnessed by the school governors on a recent visit.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
There were are that I think really deserve a mention. I’ll call them Student A, Student B, and Student C.
Student A is in Year 7 and was very disengaged in their learning and had high social needs. They were often out of lessons due to disruptive behaviour but would always engage with Lexia. They were our first student to complete the entire Word Study Strand. It was amazing to see that big green tick! This student is now on the advanced zone for the remaining 2 strands, so they are well on their way to completing the whole program!
We have another Year 7 pupil, Student B, who has very slow processing skills but really likes short snappy activities. PowerUp has really been able to keep their focus and they’ve been able to achieve 17 certificates since starting. This student started the program on the first level of the Comprehension strand and now they are working at Level 12! It is mind-blowing! This student works very hard and completes Lexia sessions at home too. It just goes to show that pupils who reach their usage and complete extra sessions at home are really making a positive difference to their progress.
Finally, Student C is in Year 9. They were really struggling with their self-confidence in their abilities. They use a laptop for extended writing in lessons, but even then, was struggling to write a lot and stay on task. With Lexia, this pupil has progressed amazingly. They have achieved 12 certificates so far and I have received feedback from their English teacher telling me that their confidence has sky-rocketed! They are now putting up their hand in lessons which they weren’t doing before. It has taken a few terms for them to get to this point. Lexia is not an overnight fix but the sustained effort is really making a positive impact. This student has also recently won our streak competition with a streak of 424 and went on to receive a Headteacher’s Award for their effort!
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
The praise and rewards aspects of the program has been something that we have really wanted to focus on from the start. Having a robust reward system for Lexia has made a huge impact. I have been able to use a lot of the school reward systems, such as house points, and have also used the certificates. We print them off and the students love taking them home. They also receive Super House Points with a note home to parents, so that the parents can see how well they are doing.
I have discovered that there is no age limit to enjoying a prize box! We have downloaded the Lexia Loyalty Cards which they love stamping themselves as they progress through their Lexia sessions. They are always looking forward to when they have saved up enough stamps to get a prize! I have restocked the prize box over the Easter break, it is full of smelly pencils, bendy pencils and other stationary along with a few sweets and lollies. The most coveted prize, however, is the queue pass for the canteen! I write the date on it, so it’s a one-time use only! They really like choosing that prize which goes to show that prizes don’t need to cost very much at all. It works really well!
We have also created some additional resource sheets that allow students to track their progress term by term. Many of our students find it difficult to deal with a lot of information all at once so we have found that this smaller version of tracking progress has been helpful. They complete these at the start and the end of each term, and it asks them how confident they feel in Word Study, Grammar and Comprehension. At the bottom they can describe something they have been able to complete in a lesson that Lexia has helped with. For example, one student recently recognised that the work they have done in PowerUp meant that they could give an example of an adverb when asked in their English lesson. They were very pleased with themselves for remembering thanks to the catchy song in PowerUp!
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
They have been very helpful. The first term we used the reports, it took a bit of investigating to find out what everything did. LexiaUK’s training really helped us there too. We booked an additional training session, and it was useful to review the little ins and outs of the data information available. There is a lot that you may not think is there unless you click it, and then all this detailed information comes up!
The new Skills Check data has been very helpful. We look at what percentages students got and use this data to identify who may need a little additional boost with a Skill Builder. It’s helped us to use these resources much more efficiently. We use the data to choose who benefits most from a skill builder and it allows us to be much more focused on which skill builders to give the students. For example, if we see that a pupil has gotten less than 70% on their Skills Check, we will usually send the Skill Builder home for them to complete as a homework.
We have also found the Skills Status reports very useful. The visual bars showing the movement from the Foundational Zone to Intermediate and then on to Advanced has been life-changing for me in helping me evidence progression for our senior leadership. The Assistant Head SENCO will come to me and say, “I have a senior leadership meeting and need data on how the students’ literacy is progressing”, and I can produce this at the click of a button!
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
We have found that timetabling has had the biggest impact to our Lexia implementation. We made sure to consider which lessons were appropriate to take pupils out of to complete Lexia avoiding their core subjects, PE, and PSHE. This has really helped to ensure that everyone gets a minimum of 2 sessions. We have also considered which pupils will benefit from one-to-one sessions, so we have been able to ensure that additional needs are met.
I would also say that training a good number of staff has a positive impact too. There are two of us HLTAs and a number of TAs trained on the program. This means that they can take Lexia sessions and support these students as well. It may only be an hour or two out of their week, but it adds up to make a big difference!
We have also added and trained the English team to use the myLexia reports so they can see their progress of their students. This has really helped with the communication between departments. It helps us get feedback and see the impact of Lexia elsewhere in the curriculum not just within their intervention sessions. English staff have been involved in Lexia training so they can use the program themselves and check in to see the progression of their students directly.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
I would say 99% of them have said they really like the program. They love the streaks most of all, it really keeps them motivated. I think that the verbal encouragement they get from the program plays a part too. Being told they are ‘sensational’ and ‘awesome’ keeps them going. A lot of them are quite excited to be using it. In future, I would like to build on this and for Lexia to become part of their routine at home as week. Even if it is just once per week, it is a goal of mine that I think will make an even greater difference.
Do you have any additional comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school?
I think the main reason for our success with Lexia is because we have had support from the whole staff at all levels. From the top, the headteacher and governors, all the way to the TAs and support staff, everyone has been on board and working towards the same goal. I also think it’s been a success because we have worked hard to integrate it into school life. It’s become part of the way we do things, not just an add-on. Teachers now know that if they have a student in their class that is struggling due to literacy skills, that we have something in place to support them. It’s very much a team effort.
We have also been able to create some dedicated spaces to Lexia in school. In the Inclusion Department, we have small computer suite that acts as a Lexia classroom. We have a literacy display board in there and work to maintain a calm, quiet environment for pupils to learn and build their literacy skills. Even for pupils who may have been disruptive and sent out of lessons, they are very calm once they get into our Lexia space. It is a safe space for everyone.
Our Star School for May is…
Oasis Academy Leesbrook!
We spoke to Abbie Macguire and Beth Meacock who are reading tutors at the school. They have been able to successfully use Lexia PowerUp along with their Primary teaching experience to support pupils in Years 7 – 10 in boosting their literacy skills.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Abbie: We are both primary trained so we have come across a lot of other reading programs. For us, we have found Lexia much better for tracking progress. Other programs have allowed pupils to work independently but I don’t feel like they gave me, as a teacher, the ownership of what they were doing like Lexia has. I can clearly see what they can do and what they have struggled with.
Beth: The fact that myLexia is so easy to navigate is a plus for me too. It gives such a precise, detailed run-down of each child’s individual progress. It is definitely one of the highlights of the program and what really sets it apart.
How is Lexia used in your school?
Abbie: The students that use Lexia are based off the NGRT Assessment data that happens at beginning of the school year. We go through all the pupils and their reading ages and select those pupils who have a reading age 13 months below their chronological age. These pupils make up the Lexia cohort for that year and attend intervention sessions with us.
Beth: We run 4x 1 hour Lexia sessions per day on Monday and Tuesday and then on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we have and additional morning for each group. Each group has 2 sessions per week and we see all year groups from Year 7 to Year 10 so it is used very widely in school. Lexia session take place in the library where we have computers and space available for the students to work on PowerUp.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy?
Abbie: It’s given them the confidence to read out loud because, quite often, the pupils’ we see don’t always have the fluency to read confidently out loud. Through Lexia and the help and support they have received, it has given them a lot more confidence.
Beth: Yes. We ran a pupil voice just before Christmas and asked the pupils if they felt that Lexia has positively impacted them in other lessons. All of them reported that they had been able to apply their learning to English lessons as well as a few other subjects as well. Some of the said that they had been able to apply vocabulary knowledge they had gained through Lexia to Geography and other subjects.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Abbie: We have a Year 9 pupil that joined us in September with a reading age of below 10. He started the PowerUp program in the Foundational zone but has since completely finished the whole program! He has been very engaged with the Lexia sessions and has completed all of the homework we gave him and that effort can be clearly seen in his progress. This has also reflected in his reading age since we tested again in January.
Beth: He has actually achieved a higher reading age than his chronological age!
Abbie: We were blown away with the results! He really put the hours in, and now he no longer needs intervention, he is GCSE-ready and has caught up his reading skills according to his age.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Beth: Each session, we choose a ‘Student of the Session’ and they receive a Lexia certificate and a bag of sweets. We also have a ‘Student of the Week’ which is a school-wide award where we nominate someone to get a little goodie bag from the office.
Abbie: We also have a Student of the Month where we print and laminate all the level certificates they have achieved and present them with a goodie bag with sweets, pens and bookmarks. We also provide them with Lexia badges, we have ordered some lightning bolt badges that we put into the goodie bags as well. The students also get recognition on the school’s social media and on our website as well.
Abbie: Before Easter we also held a little creative writing competition during our lessons. It was the last week and students wanted to do something a little different. We gave them a brief e.g. to include adjectives, noun phrases etc and allowed them to choose a setting of their choice. We had loads of entries, but we managed to whittle it down to our top 5 and they won an Easter egg. We have since made this into a display in the library where we are based.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Abbie: We keep track of the reports every day and check in on each of our groups. We have the classes organised on myLexia so it is easy to check in on each specific group as they are timetabled. We can see who is progressing and who needs additional support. The LexiaUK training session we had last week was really useful for this as well.
Beth: We got a few hints and tips that we had not yet come across such as how the Lexia lessons are assigned to pupils and how to find out how many attempts pupils had completed of a unit. We have found the progress data very helpful to inform who we choose as our Student of the Week and use the usage and units progress data to help us decide. It’s been very helpful to be able to keep track of that sort of detailed data.
Abbie: We also need to produce a spreadsheet of the data for the literacy team, so having it all there has been really helpful to keep us on track. We send the Parent Reports home in the Student of the Month packs so it’s nice to be able to update parents and for them to be able see the progress they are making and what level they are up to.
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
Beth: I think the main thing we would say is consistency is key. It works really well in our school because our roles are dedicated to delivering Lexia and we can ensure that pupils are getting access every single week.
Abbie: With us both coming from a Primary setting and having our own classes, we know how hard it can be to try and run various interventions alongside class teaching. It can be easy to lose track when you are juggling so many different things. Having trained members of staff responsible for Lexia has meant that it can be consistent, the kids know who to come to and can get into the routines needed to make progress. The fact that they can develop a positive relationship with their Lexia tutor has mean that engagement in the sessions has been high. Building those relationships is so important! Often, pupils at secondary that struggle with reading can be quite disengaged with lessons so it is important to make the sessions and those connections as positive as possible.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Beth: We will provide some quotes from our Pupil Voice questionnaire below but generally a lot of them have really enjoyed how calm the sessions are. We turn the lights down and try to keep the environment as calm and as positive as possible which has helped them work better on the program. They are nice, relaxed and in the zone when accessing Lexia so they have responded very well.
Here are some quotes from the pupils about the Lexia program:
Year 7 pupil: “It has helped me in English with my spelling. I found reading in front of other people hard because I can be quite shy, but Lexia has made me feel more confident to read to the class. “
Year 8 pupil: “I now know what a verb is etc. Also, I’ve started reading at home before bed because of Lexia. I didn’t really do that before.”
Year 9 pupil: “It’s especially made a difference in English. I didn’t know how to spell some words before but now I can.”
Year 8 pupil: “Word study helped me in English because we were reading Romeo and Juliet. We talked about dramatic irony which I had already learnt about in Lexia.”
Do you have any additional comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school?
Abbie: I think for use, it has really opened our eyes at how important it is to nail the reading skills as early as possible to ensure they get that access to the curriculum. It has been great that they have been able to access the program independently without needing direct intervention from the teacher all the time. It really helps them take that ownership of it.
Beth: It’s nice as well how the units are quite short so they constantly feel like they are progressing and getting better. It doesn’t stay on one thing for too long so it really helps to maintain their attention and engagement for longer.
Abbie: The streaks have been great for this as well. The get a real kick out of building their streaks. It’s really interactive and engaging and we can see from a data perspective that it really has an impact too! It works!
Our Star School for February is…
Bury CE High School, Greater Manchester!
We spoke to Kevin Blood (English and Literacy Learning Mentor) and Natalie Davies (SpLD Teacher/Exam Access Arrangements Assessor), who use the Lexia program with a broad range of students between Year 7 and 11.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
Natalie: It was me that initially found the program online and was given the task of researching different products. From my research, I found it to be the best in terms of the features it offered and how it could help children at our school. The research was passed on to the previous Head of English who then went on to submit a bid to the Headteacher and Lexia was purchased. We have had the programme around 3 years now. We really rate it!
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Natalie: It’s very targeted. The targeted learning pathways mean that each pupil is doing work that is exactly targeted to them at their level so it’s not too hard. It gives them exactly what they need to know. I think it is also better than other programs out there because it caters to such a wide range of ages and abilities.
Having Core5 aimed at primary level and PowerUp aimed at secondary is a great bonus. Other programs don’t seem to offer that; its usually one program for everyone with sometimes quite ‘babyish’ graphics which aren’t suitable for high school pupils. PowerUp offers the same level of support for our pupil’s but the graphics are more appropriate.
Kevin: Another thing we discussed that made the Lexia program stand out is that it was originally developed in 1984 so it is both long-standing and has updated with the development of new technology. Lexia has set the trend but has also kept right up to date.
What I like about it is that the pupils make progress quickly. We know that practice makes permanence, and Lexia doesn’t let a student move on with an ingrained error. It will always take them back to the skill and enable them to practice it until they get it right.
One of the challenges we have at the secondary level is that, for whatever reason, certain issues can become ingrained. So having Lexia to find those gaps they have and not letting them go until they are corrected is great. The Lexia Lessons are pre-prepared for us to deliver so it is really handy to address needs as and when they arise.
This supports teacher workload especially with all the stresses within the education system at the moment. The Skill Builders are helpful as well. They consolidate knowledge and ground their learning really well.
As Natalie said, it’s age appropriate. The content is right for each year group and having a separate program, dedicated to secondary-age pupils stood out for us. We do have some of our learners that use Core5 as well if they come to us at a lower level and then we can prepare them to access PowerUp when they are ready. We have found Core5 particularly helpful for our pupils with EAL.
One other thing that makes it stand out is that it is looking for learner feedback all the time. We really like to focus on learner engagement as well as it being aligned to the college and career-ready standards. This is especially good for our Year 10s and 11s.
How is Lexia used in your school? Please provide details of your daily routine and how you ensure that you reach recommended usage as well as which pupils use the program in school.
Natalie: We currently have 71 pupils on the program across Years 7 and 11. They access Lexia during form time and they also have a dedicated one-hour session per week with either Kevin or myself.
So the way this works is that there are two 20-minute morning sessions a week per year group. Instead of going to their form class, they come to the library where we can facilitate two groups at a time because it is quite a large space.
For pupils that have been assessed and have been placed in our Urgent Intervention category, they also get an additional hour session a week, on top of the 20 minutes, so they get plenty of time to catch up.
We also send Lexia home as homework which the parents appreciate and the pupils like to do as well. It’s been good to email parents termly reports as it helps to bring up the usage they get at home. If parents get access to the reports, it helps to get them on board as they are more involved with their child’s learning. It is all about communicating with parents.
We have one pupil who has almost finished the program because they have been so engaged with it at home and because we have a good relationship with parents we can pass on that information.
We have found that Lexia can cover a lot of needs in school. We use it for SEN pupils and, as a dyslexia specialist, I have found it helpful to use Lexia to support these interventions too.
We have a large cohort of EAL pupils that it has helped and it has also covered the disadvantage gap too, supporting our pupil premium and Free School Meals students. It covers a wide range of needs and every pupil is getting the support they need.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy? Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Kevin: Yes, we have. There are a lot of pupils who are currently accessing Lexia that now attend the library during social times and some are now even librarians! We have received positive feedback from teachers, saying pupils are engaging and performing better in lessons, with some pupils volunteering to read aloud who would never have previously. I think that has been a real positive.
Natalie: That is a massive achievement! Having pupils come to our sessions and telling us how they have read out loud in class, I couldn’t believe it! You can really see how it has affected their confidence.
Kevin: The engagement with the library has been very apparent this year, it has recently been improved and as soon as it opened again a lot of our Lexia students were straight in as they now have that confidence to use it.
Natalie: It is great. Having those basic literacy skills has massively brought the students confidence up across the school.
Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Natalie: We have had a few that we can think of! One pupil, which we will call A is now in Year 9. When they were in year 7, A’s reading age was 7 years and 9 months. A has been accessing the programme since Y7 and their reading age is now 11 years. They never read aloud when starting at Bury Church and during last year’s school Christmas Carol service, they read out a passage in front of the whole school and staff. A is also now a librarian and, because they have improved their confidence when speaking as well, they regularly volunteer to be a tour guide on Opening Evenings for prospective Y7 pupils and their parents.
Kevin: We have another pupil in Year 9, who we will call M. M came on the radar for intervention after a spring STAR reading assessment this year which gave her a result of 7 years and 7 months. M has been accessing the programme for 7 months during form time twice a week along with a 1-hour lesson per week with me. We recently retested them and their reading age is now 11 years and 5 months. M is now ‘At Benchmark’ and no longer needs to access Lexia. That is such a huge leap in such a short time. I was blown away when I saw the result!
They stand a good chance of accessing the whole curriculum now. One thing I noticed that helped this pupil in particular was the work they did on Greek and Latin roots. Having this knowledge has really opened up a lot of the science curriculum as well as the social sciences. Talking with the student about these concrete examples of where it can be applied to the curriculum made the student understand the benefit of the work they had done.
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Natalie: We use the Lexia certificates, they are printed off monthly, so pupils’ achievements on the programme are continually reinforced. During the form time sessions, we hand out raffle tickets for pupils who are making good progress and engaging well with the program. On the second session of the week, we do a raffle for each year group and 5 pupils get picked to get a prize!
For small group 1-hour sessions, each student has their own bespoke literacy reward chart and receives stickers for working well which equate to prizes. This works very well. They go mad for it! They always want to show us how many stickers that have gotten each day. It has been a real motivator for them.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Kevin: The Lexia Parent Reports are very useful for me for informing parents on where their child is up to, and it opens a channel to frequently communicate with parents without adding to teacher workload. I don’t have to go and compose an in-depth report myself, it is all there. They are clear and well broken down and, if there are any questions, parents can get in touch and we can discuss it further.
The Parent Reports also provide an good opportunity to promote home usage in a targeted and focused way. When a report goes back home, it encourages parents to keep their child using Lexia at home because they can see what it is the students need to work on exactly.
The Student Skill Reports are made available to teachers as they come off the programme, so, at that point, quality-first teaching can take place based on the information given which allows for differentiation. It is reinforcing good practice across the whole school.
We log on to myLexia up to 3-4 times a week to check on pupils’ progress and establish if any require further support with Lexia lessons. Lessons are completed during form and small group sessions with specific members of staff. We have found the lessons helpful in informing planning across the school. They are nice and quick to deliver which is particularly helpful during our form group sessions.
Natalie: It is good that the system also provides the answers to the Lessons and Skill Builders as well, especially when you are marking a lot of them at once. It’s a real time-saver!
What main piece of advice would you give to a school that was just getting started with Lexia?
Natalie: I think we both agree that there must be a structured approach to delivering this online intervention. It can’t just be a case of purchasing Lexia and putting pupils in front of a computer. That’s how we have been so successful at this school. You need to make sure that you set specific times, dates, constant monitoring for pupil engagement and the communication with home to promote home access.
The use of prizes alongside the certificates is a big thing that we would recommend. It really helps to motivate the pupils.
We also recommend staff that are using Lexia should complete the training offered by LexiaUK. We found that very helpful at the start to support us navigating through the different systems and finding out about all the features that make life so much easier, like the log in cards. Lexia provides the tools for the structure, you just need to know how to access it and apply it. That’s why the training is so important.
Having consistent staff delivering Lexia is also very important. For example, Kevin and I run the interventions and that works well because we understand the pupils needs and we know how to deliver Lexia effectively. It also helps in building that relationship with your Lexia pupils, because having reading difficulties can make students feel vulnerable and having that rapport can help them succeed. Parents appreciate having a specific person to go to as well.
Kevin: I agree, it all comes down to the structure of it. With limited time, a somewhat rigid structure is what makes it work well. Everything is there, you just need to build a structure and a routine around it.
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Natalie: They love it! They are so enthusiastic about it. Quite a few of the pupils have said they like the videos and find them funny. They also really like the streaks, a lot of our kids call them strikes! They get excited when they get a strike! They also like the way they can track their own progress from their Student Dashboard and, of course, they love the certificates!
Do you have any additional comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school?
Natalie: Lexia has had such a massive impact on our pupils and, in a recent Ofsted inspection, we were told that our pupils, from accessing the program and the support we deliver at school that ‘the school has improved its systems to identify the specific barriers that cause some pupils to have insecure reading knowledge.
The support that these pupils receive is effective in helping them to become confident and fluent readers.’ (Ofsted, September 2023) It just shows how much it has actually helped the pupils and, for Ofsted to pick that up, we were really impressed!
Kevin: Just to add a personal note as well; when I was in school, I struggled with reading as well. Reading intervention back then was much more basic but it changed my life. It has inspired me to keep going in my role as I know the impact it has on students’ lives. Us as a staff and Lexia are able to help these kids access a better quality of life. Particularly for pupils that have come from a disadvantaged background, that can make a world of difference.
I appreciate the value that Lexia has brought to our pupils. If I had Lexia when I was a kid, I would have made progress much quicker and may not have felt as self-conscious about reading too!
This month our Star School is…
Meden School, Nottinghamshire!
We spoke to Stephanie, who is the Lexia Lead at Meden School, and Emma, who supports Lexia sessions. They told us about the hugely successful launch of the program that they had this year.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
Stephanie: We came across it when we noticed from our termly reading tests that there was a large gap between where they were and where they should be. Our HLTA discovered the program and did some research into it. We then put a presentation forward to the Headteacher to tell them about the PowerUp program and that a certain amount of usage time has been proven to see results.
We started fully rolling it out in December as a trial to allow us to see if it worked. I was able to get enough data to prove to SLT that it was working really effectively with our students.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Stephanie: I think it is how interactive it is. Emma, who comes in and supports me 3-4 times a week, would also agree with me.
Emma: Yes. I also think as well, it’s the fact that it customises support to each individual student. It really is aimed at building their whole literacy skill set but in a really unique way that is designed just for them. I think that is fantastic skill that, even as teachers, sometimes we can find difficult to grasp and set those specific targets for students. The Lexia program does it for us which is amazing!
How is Lexia used in your school? Please provide details of your daily routine and how you ensure that you reach recommended usage as well as which pupils use the program in school.
Stephanie: We have 150 pupils from Years 7, 8 and 9 on the Lexia program now. They complete their 30 minutes, three times a week. Students who go on the program are determined by their reading test results that we run each term.
We split the students into small groups of about 10-12 so we can provide any support if needed. We have 3 groups of Year 7, 3 for Year 8 and 3 for Year 9 who all have timetabled slots for Lexia every week.
First thing in the morning, before the groups come in, I will log into myLexia and check who needs additional intervention, who needs Skill Builders and decide which students I will sit with as they work on the online program. Some of our students have SEN, so prefer to be actively working through the program with me supporting them side by side. We tend to offer differentiation in how we deliver the program depending on each individual child.
The Skill Builders are usually sent home as a homework activity so that we can include parents in the program. This helps us to encourage parents to sit down with them and be involved in their learning. It doesn’t always have to be a parent, a sibling can also help and get involved. We even joked that even the family dog could sit next to them while they do a skill builder! It’s all about building that independence and autonomy and not forcing the idea that it’s something ‘must do’ but something that can be helpful to them.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy? Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Stephanie: I do a 4-weekly review of how the students are progressing. In my most recent review, it has showed that about 30% of pupils Year 7 have moved from the Foundational Levels to Intermediate. In Year 8 and 9 this figure was more like 34% that moved up into the Intermediate material. We have also just had our reading test results back in and as a result we have identified 12 students that can now come off the program and have caught up completely!
A couple of students I can think of started the program with their skills not even at Foundational level but are now working in the Advanced levels. Their progress has really flown since starting it even though they have had the same timetabled usage as the rest of the class!
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Stephanie: I have created sticker charts for the student that have really encouraged students to interact with all aspects of the program. Some can be hesitant to complete some of the Grammar activities. So the sticker charts means that they have the chance, depending on the number of units and levels they complete, to get stickers, sweets and other incentives.
I have noticed that, since introducing the charts, they are completing more units because they have that incentive. The outcome at the end is that they get a school trip or something like a pizza afternoon near the end of term.
We have found this has really helped keep them motivated because it can be hard to keep up 3 30-minutes session every week so its been really good to offer both smaller and larger rewards. I didn’t think sticker charts would work so well but the love getting a sticker!
Of course, we have also folded the Lexia program into our wider school rewards system as well. They get Golden Tickets when they do particularly well, and the top achieving students will go on the reward trips at the end of the year whether it be a cinema trip, bowling or the theatre. We do all sorts!
We also share success with parents by sending home postcards. We can write on those small successes such as they have met their usage targets or have gotten to the next level. This really keeps parents involved.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Stephanie: The reports are amazing! We both use it and the information it gives is to the finest detail. It has got everything you could need. The best thing for me is how it flags up what the students are struggling with. Some of our students aren’t the most confident in asking for help. It really helps to know which students might be needing some additional support so we can be more proactive in approaching them before they leave it too long without asking for help.
The usage reports have been very helpful to tell us who how many minutes students have achieved overall as well as the skills reports to see how everyone is progressing. I can print these out individually and as a group to help me use these as a comparison as well. They are very comprehensive and helpful!
How have you expanded Lexia into home-use? How have parents responded?
Stephanie: While we haven’t yet rolled out home use, we have been able to send home the parent specific myLexia reports. This helps the parents see the progress and see specifically how their children are doing and what skills they are working on.
So far, we have sent the Skill Builders home which have been great to promote self-regulated learning at home. We would be interested in finding out more on how they can access Lexia from home, and this could definitely be a way we could develop the use of the program further.
Is there anything else you would like to add? Please provide any personal comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school.
Emma: The way it is moulded to each student is what I find so fantastic about Lexia. We have lots of students using it but they are all at different points on it, so we are assured that they are working at the appropriate level for them.
Stephanie: Something that I have noted is the videos. I can see the kids chuckling at them and they are really engaged with it. All the rap, poetry and songs within the videos, they seem to like it and respond really well to it. Those are the main things; it engages them but it’s also personal to each student which I think they like as well because it’s much better that always doing paper and pencil activities.
They do get really involved; I can see one student in the room with us right now bobbing her head to something, so I know she’s engaged!
What feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Stephanie: We have some students working on Lexia with us now, would you like some live feedback?
Stephanie chooses 3 students in the classroom to give some feedback:
Student 1: “I like Lexia because it helps me learn what nouns and pronouns are and it helps me use grammar in my lessons.”
Student 2: “I think Lexia has helped me with my spelling because before I couldn’t spell some specific words but now I can spell some words that I didn’t know how to spell before.”
Student 3: “Lexia helps me do better in English and spell words better in my lessons. It also helps with my grammar and I understand where commas go a bit better now.”
Stephanie: There you go!
A huge thank you to Stephanie, Emma and their Lexia students for speaking with us and for implementing the PowerUp program so well in their school!
This month our Literacy Spotlight is on the City of Peterborough. We spoke with Karen and Rosie who coordinate and run the Lexia program with their Year 7, 8 and 9 pupils. They share their thoughts on how they have implemented Lexia so well and why they enjoy using it in school.
How did you first come across the Lexia program and what led to the school’s final decision to purchase?
Karen: Literacy in the school has been low due to the demographic of the area that we are in, and we hadn’t really been able to focus on it as much as we wanted to. So, they appointed a new Literacy Lead who is a Senior Assistant Principal and also an English Teacher. She wanted a provision for the students that were just below where they needed to be.
We have looked into other programs, but they were more games-based. PowerUp gives you the reports and the breakdown of where students need help. We trialed it with these students for a while and then fully implemented it with this group at the start of September. It’s going really well so far and the Literacy Lead is really pleased.
What do you feel makes Lexia stand apart from other reading skills software products on the market?
Karen: I think it is engaging. The songs and videos raise the students’ eyebrows at first but when they get into it, they really enjoy it. We hear them repeating the songs and encouraging phrases in the classroom. They also like using the tips tool built into the PowerUp program to get some extra support. Some of the students don’t like asking for help so we are able to point out all the things in the program they can use before they get to the point of asking the teacher questions. They are getting really good at working independently now! If they can’t work through themselves, we notice this when we are checking their progress on myLexia and we can step in if we need to.
Rosie: I think one of the biggest highlights for the students and for us is having that immediate feedback. It’s one of the really great things about this program. Other programs that we were running before really didn’t have the same level of confirmation and praise that goes with PowerUp. Having that immediate ‘well done’ or ‘good job’ as well as the immediate step back and support to look at it a different way has been great to have in the moment. It makes a big difference to our students.
How is Lexia used in your school? Please provide details of your daily routine and how you ensure that you reach recommended usage as well as which pupils use the program in school.
Karen: Lexia has been set up for Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 students who have a standardised score between 85- 99, this means they are just below their actual reading age.
The students are timetabled to come out of one lesson a week in groups of no more than 12 students, so they have the best chance of focusing for the hour they are with me.
They come into the library and we use the space to spread out the laptops around the room with headphones. We also provide support sheets to students to promote independent learning. I have created definitions sheets and laminated them for the grammar section of the program, this is so the students have a visual aid. I have also printed and laminated the Lexia Powerup Anchor charts for more specific visual support for the students, these also encourage independent development as they are able to refer to the sheets before asking for help.
We have also made laminated log in cards from myLexia to help them get logged in quickly. They are colour-coded according to year group. We have our own Lexia registers so we are up to date with who has been to the Lexia sessions so it is a bit like a military operation!
How have you used rewards to motivate and celebrate success on the Lexia program?
Karen: I set the students targets and they get to win prizes from the “jar of dreams”. The students love the challenge of winning prizes and golden tickets which are part of the school’s reward system. In the jar is a selection of nice stationary and we also have some reading books the students can choose from.
We’ve had some specialised wristbands made with cheesy grammar slogans like ‘punctuation pro’ and ‘literacy legend’. They like those as well. We are trying our best to make it a positive experience to do literacy work.
How useful have you found the myLexia reports in terms of demonstrating progression and informing planning?
Karen: The Lexia reports are very useful when we are seeing where they are struggling but also when we are working with students who have EHCPs. They have reviews each year to establish if they have met their targets so we have been able to print the reports off for the SEN department to help. They can use the reports to show that they are receiving the correct intervention and the progress they are making in those sessions as well as all the areas that they need more support in.
The English department and the teachers communicate with us and ask how pupils are doing with certain skills and we can also provide them with reports that they can use for their lessons as well.
We have regular meetings with the school’s Literacy Lead where we review student progress and address any concerns. We sit and decide whether the student needs additional support within the lesson, one-to-one support or a referral being put into our SEN department for more specialised interventions.
Describe the impact that Lexia has had on your pupils. Have you noticed a positive change in their motivation to succeed in literacy? Can you give an example of a Lexia success that sticks out to you?
Karen: In September, we had the students complete an NGRT reading test to select the students for the program and towards the end of February they completed a second to track progress. Out of 148 students 96 improved their reading age. This is fantastic, and we are very proud of our students and our Head of Literacy is putting a Lexia graduation pack together for the students who no longer need the support of Lexia.
Since purchasing Lexia, we have seen steady progression from the students accessing the interventions, they arrive to the lessons enthused and asking what their target is for the session.
We have also seen a rise in these same students coming into our library and looking for opportunities to read for leisure, we promote book reviews and reward well written and punctuated reviews.
How have you expanded Lexia into home-use?
Karen: Before the Summer and Christmas holidays, Rosie and I create Lexia packs to go home. It includes a certificate, a skill builder, an activity like a word search or Lexia Bingo, a reading book, bookmark and some stickers to promote literacy even when the students are not in school.
Is there anything else you would like to add? Please provide any personal comments on why you feel Lexia has been successful in your school.
Rosie: For me, I also teach English lessons with small groups especially pupils that have larger gaps in their knowledge. I have found it helpful to look through the Lexia resources for some of the skills that they might have missed in Primary or don’t have a basic grasp of when they are expected in lessons to perform at a higher level. It’s nice to have the Lexia resources in the English department that we can pull from for things like ‘simple sentence construction’ and revisiting the word types. Having those paper resources there help us bolster our own knowledge and help the students that may have missed these elements of the curriculum and bridging those gaps in their English lessons as well. There a so many resources. I don’t think I’ve ever had a moment where I have needed a certain resource and I’ve not been able to find it.
Karen: They are useful. We have laminated a lot of the Anchor Charts for when the students come across something that they are not sure on. Instead of them having the resources on screen, they can have the physical sheet in front of them. Everything is used!
Finally, what feedback have you had from your Lexia pupils?
Rosie: We had a couple of students that, when they were retested, they had reached their expected reading age. We told them that they have graduated the program and that they would not need to attend sessions anymore and they had asked if they could continue coming to the sessions anyway, which was amazing to hear! They wanted to keep going and they wanted to keep improving. It was surprising but lovely!
Karen: It is always good to hear. They do love it. They are interested. Usually, I will take a look at the screen while they are working and see what levels they are all at to ensure that all move on from the foundation zone. The students are always asking for feedback of what strand they should do next so they can improve.