Why Confident Readers Make Confident Learners

Reading is much more than a skill—it’s a gateway to understanding the world, unlocking potential, and building a foundation for lifelong learning. For school leaders and educators alike, prioritising literacy is key to fostering both academic success and personal growth in pupils. Confident readers often become confident learners, and in turn, this confidence supports better engagement, wider progress, and positive outcomes across the curriculum.

In this post, we’ll explore the link between literacy and learning confidence, discuss its impact on pupil outcomes, and provide actionable strategies to promote reading at the school and classroom levels.

The Connection Between Literacy and Confidence

Children who are confident in their reading abilities tend to carry that confidence into other areas of their learning. The ability to read fluently allows pupils to engage with texts across all subjects, from science experiments to history lessons. This understanding fosters a sense of achievement and autonomy, empowering pupils to participate more actively in discussions and group activities.

The ripple effect is profound. A child who feels capable when tackling a challenging book will often approach other tasks, such as solving maths problems or writing essays, with the same belief in their abilities. Confidence in reading equips children with the self-assurance to persevere, problem-solve, and explore independently.

Literacy: The Key to the Curriculum

For many pupils, the ability to read and comprehend written materials is essential for accessing the full breadth of the curriculum. From deciphering exam questions to following instructions for a science experiment, reading underpins success in every subject.

Yet, pupils with low literacy levels face significant barriers. A lack of reading confidence can lead to disengagement, frustration, and a widening gap in achievement. The good news is that focused reading interventions can transform not only a pupil’s academic outcomes but also their overall attitude towards learning.

By prioritising literacy, schools can create an environment where all pupils—regardless of their starting point—have the tools they need to thrive.

Adopting a Literacy-for-All Mindset

Equity in literacy means ensuring that every pupil—regardless of background, ability, or starting point—can develop strong reading skills. For many schools, this requires a shift from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more personalised and inclusive strategy. To achieve this, the following steps can be taken:

• Identify Needs: Use data to pinpoint groups of pupils who may face barriers to literacy, such as those with English as an additional language (EAL), pupils with special educational needs, or those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Once you’ve identified these groups, ensure that interventions are designed to address their unique challenges.
• Personalise Support: Offer tailored interventions that cater to different skill levels and learning styles. For example, visual learners might benefit from graphic organisers or illustrated texts, while auditory learners may respond better to listening activities or group discussions.

• Provide Diverse Resources: Use a variety of materials, including digital tools and age-appropriate texts, to engage learners at all levels. In addition, offering a mix of group activities and one-to-one support ensures that no pupil is left behind.
• Create an Inclusive Culture: An inclusive school culture that celebrates diversity in literacy can make a big difference. Use texts that reflect the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of your pupils, making reading relevant and relatable.

Integrating Reading into Every Subject

Embedding reading across all subjects is essential to fostering confident learners. Disciplinary Literacy, which focuses on the specific reading and writing skills required within each subject, can help children make connections between their literacy skills and their understanding of various subjects.

Here’s how to integrate reading seamlessly into every subject across the curriculum:

Adapt Reading Strategies for Each Subject: Each subject has its own language and methods of communication. For example, history often involves analysing text with a focus on cause and effect while science relies on reading technical vocabulary.

Create Cross-Curricular Reading Opportunities: Incorporate reading tasks into various subjects to show pupils how literacy skills apply beyond English lessons. For example, use non-fiction texts in science to explore topics like habitats or forces, or historical letters and diary entries in history to bring key events to life. By embedding reading into different areas of the curriculum, pupils develop a deeper understanding of subject content while strengthening their comprehension and critical thinking skills.

Foster Vocabulary Development Across Subjects: Teach subject-specific vocabulary explicitly, incorporating morphology to help pupils understand and use academic language. For example, break down terms like “photosynthesis” into its Greek roots—photo (light) and synthesis (putting together)—to deepen understanding. This approach not only builds confidence in using complex vocabulary but also equips pupils with tools to decode unfamiliar words independently.

Integrating Reading into Every Subject

Embedding reading across all subjects is essential to fostering confident learners. Disciplinary Literacy, which focuses on the specific reading and writing skills required within each subject, can help children make connections between their literacy skills and their understanding of various subjects.

Here’s how to integrate reading seamlessly into every subject across the curriculum:

1. Adapt Reading Strategies for Each Subject: Each subject has its own language and methods of communication. For example, history often involves analysing text with a focus on cause and effect while science relies on reading technical vocabulary.
2. Create Cross-Curricular Reading Opportunities: Incorporate reading tasks into various subjects to show pupils how literacy skills apply beyond English lessons. For example, use non-fiction texts in science to explore topics like habitats or forces, or historical letters and diary entries in history to bring key events to life. By embedding reading into different areas of the curriculum, pupils develop a deeper understanding of subject content while strengthening their comprehension and critical thinking skills.
3. Foster Vocabulary Development Across Subjects: Teach subject-specific vocabulary explicitly, incorporating morphology to help pupils understand and use academic language. For example, break down terms like “photosynthesis” into its Greek roots—photo (light) and synthesis (putting together)—to deepen understanding. This approach not only builds confidence in using complex vocabulary but also equips pupils with tools to decode unfamiliar words independently.

A Vision for Literacy with Confidence

Schools that prioritise literacy see a profound impact on their pupils’ outcomes. When reading is embedded in the school’s culture, pupils gain not only the skills to access the curriculum but also the confidence to be curious, explore and express themselves.

This transformation often starts with leadership. By championing literacy initiatives, school leaders can create a school-wide focus on reading that benefits every child, fostering a thriving, inclusive community where all learners can succeed.

Partnering with LexiaUK for Literacy Success

At LexiaUK, we believe in Literacy for All. Our mission is to empower schools with evidence-based tools and strategies to transform reading outcomes for every pupil. From targeted interventions to whole-school solutions, we provide the support schools need to make literacy a priority.

If you’re ready to unlock your school’s potential through reading, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us today to discuss your needs and discover how LexiaUK can help you achieve your vision for school-wide literacy success.

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Your School Needs a Lexia Coordinator

Allocating a dedicated Lexia Coordinator is one of the most effective ways  your school can get the most out of Lexia Core5 Reading or Lexia PowerUp Literacy. A Lexia Coordinator oversees the day-to-day running of the program, making sure it’s been implemented effectively. But what does that look like in practice, and how can schools ensure this role has the impact it deserves? In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of having a Lexia Coordinator and offer practical tips for success.

The Key Role of a Lexia Coordinator

A Lexia Coordinator is the key link between your Lexia program and your school’s operations. Their primary responsibilities include:

• Ensuring Consistent Program Usage: A Lexia Coordinator keeps the literacy program at the forefront of teachers’ daily plans. They encourage regular usage across classrooms, ensuring students are engaging with Lexia consistently to make progress.
• Data Monitoring and Reporting: myLexia provides detailed data on student progress. The Lexia Coordinator monitors this data to identify where pupils need additional support and shares these insights with teachers to shape interventions.
• Supporting Staff: The Lexia Coordinator acts as a resource for teachers, answering questions, offering guidance on how to use the program, and sharing strategies to improve results.
• Liaison Between School and LexiaUK: Coordinators bridge communication between your school and LexiaUK, keeping staff informed about updates or best practices and ensuring any technical or educational queries are addressed quickly.
• Celebrating Success – The Lexia Coordinator plays a vital role in promoting the celebration of milestones among staff and students—whether it’s printing and awarding certificates, posting celebrations on social media, or sharing achievements with parents. This recognition helps keep students engaged and proud of their progress.

Tips for a Successful Lexia Coordinator

Assigning a Lexia Coordinator is the first step, but how do you make sure the role is as effective as possible? Here are five practical tips:

1. Choose Someone with a Passion for Literacy – Your Lexia Coordinator should be someone who is committed to improving literacy outcomes and has strong relationships with staff and students. A literacy champion can inspire others to engage more actively with the program, making sure it becomes an integral part of the school’s learning environment.
2. Allocate Regular Time for the Role – It’s crucial that the Lexia Coordinator has dedicated time to manage the program effectively. Whether it’s during planning periods or INSET days, ensure there is time set aside for them to monitor data, review student progress, and address any challenges.
3. Encourage Regular Data Reviews – Lexia’s data insights are one of its most powerful tools. Regularly reviewing student progress allows the Coordinator to identify trends and patterns, ensuring students who are falling behind are given the right support. Set up weekly or fortnightly data reviews to keep everything on track.
4. Offer Ongoing Training and Support – The role of Lexia Coordinator isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ position. Make sure they have access to ongoing training from LexiaUK, including resources, webinars and videos. Annual training is included as part of your school’s Lexia package, so there is nothing further to pay to access ongoing support.
5. Maintain Open Communication – It’s vital for the Lexia Coordinator to provide regular updates to staff and leadership. By sharing progress reports, celebrating student successes, and addressing areas for improvement, the Lexia Coordinator keeps everyone engaged and aligned with literacy goals.

Why Your School Needs a Lexia Coordinator

Allocating a Lexia Coordinator is a practical way to maximise the benefits of Lexia programs in your school. With a Coordinator in place, you ensure that Lexia is being used effectively, student progress is regularly tracked, and teachers have the support they need to succeed.

If your school has already appointed a Lexia Coordinator or is thinking about doing so, we’re here to help. LexiaUK offers comprehensive training designed to empower your Coordinator, helping them to thrive in their role and ensure your school gets the most out of our programs.

Get in Touch for Lexia Coordinator Training and Support

To learn more about how LexiaUK can support your Lexia Coordinator with training and resources, reach out to our team today. Whether it’s through our webinars, one-to-one support sessions, or detailed guidance on data usage, we’re here to ensure your Lexia Coordinator is fully equipped to make a lasting impact.

Technology and Modern Literacy Interventions

As secondary school educators work to close literacy gaps and raise academic achievement, the increasing complexity of the curriculum often leaves some students struggling to keep up. Literacy challenges don’t just impact English lessons; they affect learning across all subjects. Addressing these gaps is essential for ensuring every student can access the full curriculum. However, with tight schedules, limited resources, and the broad range of ability among students, providing tailored literacy support is a significant challenge.

So, how can schools efficiently support diverse student needs without overwhelming teachers or stretching resources?

Understanding the Literacy Challenge in Secondary Schools

When students enter secondary school, they are expected to handle more complex texts and subject-specific vocabulary. Students still developing basic literacy skills often have trouble  engaging with the curriculum, hindering their performance across many subjects. This makes it critical to ensure that students continue building foundational literacy skills alongside developing more advanced ones.

Providing consistent, individualised literacy support within the constraints of a packed school timetable is a common struggle. Teachers need strategies that are practical, efficient, and capable of addressing varied learning needs in the classroom. This is where technology can step in to provide a meaningful solution.

The Role of Technology in Supporting Literacy Development

Many schools are finding that digital tools offer valuable ways to extend support to students without overburdening staff. Technology provides a way to supplement classroom instruction and support self-directed learning, particularly with literacy interventions.

One key advantage of using educational technology is that it allows students to learn at their own pace. Adapting to individual learning needs, technology-based programs can target specific gaps in a student’s skills, helping them make progress without falling behind their peers. This personalised approach also frees up time for teachers to focus on students who require more direct intervention.

Personalising Literacy Support with Adaptive Learning

When it comes to literacy, no two students are the same. Some may struggle with basic reading skills, while others need help refining their comprehension of complex texts. Schools are often aware of these literacy challenges among their students, but find it daunting to identify specific issues then implement tailored solutions—especially with limited time and resources. Furthermore, delivering a one-size-fits-all solution is often ineffective and can lead to students falling further behind.

Practical Steps for Implementing Technology-Based Literacy Interventions

Here are some practical steps for schools looking to implement technology in their literacy strategies:

1. Identify gaps early: Regular assessments can help identify students who are falling behind. Digital tools can automate this process, providing real-time insights into students’ progress.
2. Blend Learning approaches: Combine classroom instruction with self-paced learning activities. This allows students to work independently on their literacy skills while still receiving guidance from teachers.
3. Utilise data: Technology offers a wealth of data on student progress, enabling teachers to make informed decisions about interventions and focus their efforts where they are most needed.

4. Engage students with interactive content: Digital literacy programs often include interactive activities that keep students engaged and motivated to improve their skills. These features frequently offer effective reward schemes that enable progress milestones to be celebrated.

By adopting these strategies, schools can provide more tailored support to students, helping them build the literacy skills needed for academic success.

Why Lexia PowerUp Literacy?

At LexiaUK, we recognise the importance of personalised literacy interventions that support a range of needs in secondary students. This is why we offer Lexia PowerUp Literacy. Designed for secondary school students, PowerUp offers personalised literacy support in three key areas—word study, grammar, and comprehension.

Using adaptive technology, PowerUp adjusts to meet the unique needs of each student, whether they’re struggling with foundational skills or working on higher-level comprehension. Lexia is backed by trusted research and has been proven effective in real-world classroom settings, providing educators with confidence in its ability to deliver results.

The program provides real-time data and progress monitoring, helping teachers identify where additional support is needed without adding to their workload. By integrating technology like PowerUp, schools can enhance their literacy strategies, ensuring every student gets the right support to thrive academically.

Leveraging the right technology can make a significant difference in how schools address literacy gaps. Lexia PowerUp Literacy offers a scalable, effective solution for delivering tailored, impactful interventions, making it a valuable tool for secondary schools aiming to raise achievement and ensure literacy for all students.

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Literacy For All: Closing the Attainment Gap

Faced with the diverse literacy needs of their students, secondary schools are grappling with the challenge of delivering the right level of support to every pupil. With tightening budgets and a shortage of literacy specialists, many secondary schools are facing significant challenges in providing the literacy support their students need.

Lack of funding means schools often struggle to hire enough teachers, teaching assistants, or literacy specialists, which in turn limits the scope for tailored literacy interventions. In response, some schools have turned to hiring primary staff to address literacy gaps in secondary students, but these staff are not always readily available or equipped for the complexities of secondary-level literacy demands. This highlights a critical need for innovative solutions.

Leveraging technology can offer a time-efficient and cost-effective way to meet these literacy challenges, enabling schools to provide personalised, adaptive support without the need for additional specialist staff. When literacy is prioritised across the whole school, it becomes a powerful tool for unlocking students’ potential in every subject—from interpreting complex instructions in maths to comprehending scientific texts. By integrating technology-driven solutions, schools can bridge the gap and ensure literacy remains a foundation for academic success, for all students, even in resource-constrained environments.

Prioritising Literacy as a Foundation for Success

Most students arrive at Secondary having been taught to read through Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP). However, when pupils reach Key Stage 3 and face the challenges of the secondary curriculum, it often becomes clear that not all have fully developed the foundational reading skills necessary to progress. In many cases, reading deficiencies are masked and the underlying issues are not always related to phonic knowledge. Some pupils may appear to be decoding words correctly but still struggle with comprehension, fluency or vocabulary.

When literacy is at the core of learning, students are better equipped to engage with complex materials in subjects like maths, science, and history. For example, understanding word problems in maths or grasping technical language in science depends heavily on strong reading skills. School leaders can play a vital role by promoting literacy as a key driver of academic achievement in every subject area.

Building a literacy-rich environment doesn’t just mean focusing on reading during English lessons. It’s about integrating literacy support into all subjects, helping students develop the ability to interpret and analyse text, communicate effectively, and understand subject-specific vocabulary. This is where the concept of disciplinary literacy becomes essential.

Disciplinary Literacy: Integrating Reading Across the Curriculum

Disciplinary literacy—the ability to read, write, and communicate effectively within different subject areas—has become increasingly important in secondary education. Each subject has its own specific language, texts, and conventions. Whether it’s understanding historical documents, interpreting literary texts, or solving word problems in maths, students need to develop subject-specific literacy skills to succeed.

One way to support disciplinary literacy is through interventions that expose students to a wide range of texts spanning multiple subjects. This approach helps students not only improve their reading comprehension but also learn how to apply these skills across the curriculum. In addition, explicit instruction in morphology—particularly in Greek and Latin roots—can be highly effective in building subject-specific vocabulary.

By understanding the structure of words, students are better equipped to decode unfamiliar terms, which enhances their ability to grasp complex concepts in subjects like science, history, and geography. For example, teaching a student the Greek form, ‘poly’ unlocks the meaning of several subject-specific words such as polygon, polysyllabic and polymer.

When schools integrate these literacy strategies, they empower students to navigate academic texts in any subject, helping them build the skills and confidence needed to succeed across the board.

Overcoming Time and Resource Constraints

For many secondary school leaders, a major challenge is finding the time and resources to dedicate to literacy support. As secondary schools face tight scheduled and a full curriculum, it can be difficult to allocate the focused time and attention needed to support every struggling reader. On top of this, the shortage of literacy specialists means that many schools lack the staff needed to provide targeted interventions.

While some secondary schools are turning to primary-trained staff to address this gap, these individuals are not always available or prepared for the complexities of secondary-level literacy challenges.

However, technology offers a way to make literacy support more accessible and efficient. Digital literacy tools can provide personalised learning paths for students, allowing them to work on the specific areas where they need improvement. These tools can also reduce the planning burden on teachers by offering ready-made resources and progress monitoring tools. By leveraging technology, schools can ensure that more students receive the literacy support they need without requiring additional staffing or class time.

Adaptive Teaching for Diverse Needs

Secondary schools often have a wide range of literacy abilities within each year group. Some students may still struggle with basic reading skills, while others are ready for more advanced content. Meeting these diverse needs requires an adaptive approach, ensuring that each student receives the right level of support to make progress.

One strategy to address this is through personalised learning, where students are assessed on their specific skills, and targeted interventions are provided based on their individual gaps. This kind of adaptive teaching can help all learners, regardless of their starting point, to make meaningful gains in literacy.

Literacy for All – How Lexia fits into your Whole School Literacy Approach

For schools looking to implement a practical and effective solution, Lexia PowerUp Literacy offers a research-proven approach that integrates disciplinary literacy, personalisation, and adaptive technology. PowerUp helps secondary schools support a wide range of literacy abilities by providing targeted instruction in reading comprehension, decoding, vocabulary, grammar, and fluency. Through its use of personalised learning paths, PowerUp allows students to work at their own pace while teachers receive actionable data to inform classroom instruction.

By integrating PowerUp into your school’s literacy strategy, you can take practical steps toward closing attainment gaps and ensuring every student has the literacy skills needed to succeed across the curriculum.

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Literacy Spotlight – The Compton School, London

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.

Literacy Spotlight – Upton-by-Chester High School, Cheshire

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, 2^nd Place gets a tub of chocolates and 3^rd 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.

Literacy Spotlight – Theale Green School

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 3^rd 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.

Literacy Spotlight – Oasis Academy: Leesbrook

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!

Phonics and Decoding Skills for Secondary Age Students

Each year, around one quarter of students do not meet the expected standard in reading by the time they reach secondary school (DfE, 2022). Increasingly, the need for specific intervention in foundational reading skills, such as phonics, has become vital in ensuring that all pupils can achieve academic success across the whole curriculum.

Often, it can be a challenge to find age-appropriate resources and staff that have the knowledge and skills to teach these early reading skills.

Why is Phonics & Decoding so Important?

Learning to read is not a simple task. It is made up of multiple processes and skills that work together to achieve full text understanding.

This is commonly explained by the Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) which explains that full reading comprehension is made up of both language comprehension and decoding skills. Deficiencies in any of these core skills can then lead to differing issues in reading accurately and with understanding. Watch the video below to learn more about the Simple View of Reading and how reading can be broken down into these core competencies.

Which Foundational Reading Skills Should Students be Practising?

The basics of reading can be broken down into a few key skills. For non-proficient readers, explicit practice of these core skills is vital, which is why Lexia PowerUp Literacy features each of these skills in the early levels of the Word Study strand:

• Blending: The ability to combine sounds together to read words. This can be practiced by providing students with separate sounds and asking them to blend them together to create words.
• Segmenting: Conversely to blending, students also need to be able to split words into their individual sounds, this is known as segmenting. Practice by listening to words and splitting them up into their individual sounds. This skill forms the basis of spelling.
• Confusable sounds: Often, students come to secondary with some misconceptions and may confuse similar sounding graphemes, causing inaccuracy in their spelling. Practicing distinguishing between these sounds helps to address these misconceptions, empowering pupils to be more precise with their spelling.
• Letter-Sound Correspondence: Once student have a grasp of verbal sounds, introducing the various graphical representations of sounds enables students to apply their knowledge to word-reading. This can then be built upon by breaking up and reading multi-syllabic words.
• Fluency: This skill acts as the thread that weaves all foundational reading skills together, by practicing decoding until it is automatic, fluency is achieved along with the ability to better comprehend text. Revisiting these skills regularly to support automaticity is vital to confident and fluent reading.

The Structured Literacy Approach

PowerUp utilises a Structured Literacy Approach to teach these foundational literacy skills which means it is built on 4 main principles:

1. Systematic and Cumulative – Concepts are sequenced in a logical order and builds gradually.
2. Explicit – Concepts are taught directly and clearly and each skill is clearly modelled.
3. Multisensory – Multiple learning modes are utilised to ensure that all types of learners are catered for.
4. Diagnostic – Initial assessment means that content is pitch exactly at the student’s level.

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Morphology: A Key to Unlocking Academic Vocabulary

The ability to comprehend and use a rich and diverse vocabulary is paramount for students to access all subjects in the curriculum successfully. A crucial aspect of developing a rich disciplinary vocabulary lies in understanding the morphology and etymology behind many of these academic words. The study of meaningful word parts such as prefixes, suffixes, Latin roots, and Greek combining forms, enables students to build a strong foundation for deciphering unfamiliar words, fostering a deeper understanding of language across various disciplines.

What is Morphology?

At its core, morphology is the investigation of the structure and meaning of words, focusing on their individual components. These components include prefixes, which are added at the beginning of a word; suffixes, added at the end; Latin roots, providing the core meaning of a word; and Greek combining forms, which offer additional depth to vocabulary. An understanding these word parts acts as a toolkit for decoding the academic language that permeates all aspects of the curriculum.

Why Teach Morphology?

Teaching morphology is not just an exercise in linguistic exploration; it is a powerful strategy to enhance vocabulary acquisition. By breaking down words into their morphological components, students gain a set of building blocks that they can apply to unfamiliar terms they encounter. This can have a far-reaching impact on a student’s access to the curriculum, as morphological structures are not confined to a single subject but are pervasive across various disciplines.

How Can I Implement Morphology in the Classroom?

1. Make Visual Links – Morphological word parts can be abstract, making it challenging for students to remember them. One effective strategy is to establish visual links by associating these parts with images. Our Core5 and PowerUp program begin morphology activities with simple picture-matching exercises, enabling students to create lasting visual connections that support the retention of this word knowledge.
2. Break Down Unfamiliar Words – Encourage students to break down words they come across to increase morphological awareness. Analysing the meaning of word families as well as comparing words with similar components, all foster a deeper understanding of language structure. Both Core5 and PowerUp provide students with opportunities to identify, categorise, and compare word parts, reinforcing their knowledge.
3. Use New Word Parts in Multiple Contexts – Implement a school-wide and cross-curricular approach to reinforce the use of new word parts. Encourage students to recognise these morphological elements they discover in various subjects to promote a holistic understanding of language. Core5 allows pupils to apply their knowledge by using morphological word parts in different sentences, while PowerUp challenges students to identify newly acquired word parts in passages of academic text.

Conclusion

Incorporating morphology into vocabulary instruction offers a dynamic approach to enhancing vocabulary skills across the curriculum. By building pupils’ knowledge of morphological structures, and with the help of programs like Core5 and PowerUp, educators can accelerate vocabulary acquisition and empower students to unlock academic language. Morphology is not just a tool for language enthusiasts; it is a key to unlocking a world of knowledge and understanding across a range of different subjects.

Lexia Core5 Reading | Lexia PowerUp Literacy

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Backed by independent research and trusted by thousands of educators, our literacy programmes are research-proven.

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Find out how we are helping schools to accelerate their literacy progress.

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Keep up to date with the latest industry news from LexiaUK.

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