Our pupils have enthusiastically participated in Lexia’s engaging personalised reading scheme, both at school and at home and have made good progress. They have been motivated to learn each of the various skills needed to become fluent readers using this individualised program which has moved them to the next level at their own pace, and they have been excited to feel that they are the ones in control of their learning. Their learning has also been witnessed during class following their sessions, especially when discussing specific grammatical terms which they remembered from Lexia (‘idiom’ has been a favourite to hear).
From a teacher’s point of view, everything that’s needed regarding support and intervention for any pupil who may be struggling is just a click away. Graphs and data too can be produced in a matter of seconds. Communication, technical support and backup from the customer care team has been excellent.
“My Year 1 children have really enjoyed accessing Lexia. They look forward to going on this program and have even used it at home in their own time. It is a great way for them to complete independent tasks. I really enjoy watching them on it and I have seen great progress even in a short amount of time. It differentiates all my children and provides detailed lesson plans for children who are struggling on certain aspects of the program. It prints certificates at every stage of learning and the children love being presented with these in assembly. I would thoroughly recommend this to schools.” Year 1 Teacher
“I love how engaged the children are. They beg me to let them use Lexia at playtimes. I like that they use it at home. The program is excellent at adjusting the tasks to help plug the gaps. It allows me to easily keep track of their progress.” Year 3/4 Teacher
I went to view Lexia at a local school as we were looking for a new intervention. I engaged with the company and participated in two sessions on how the program works and the reports available. The demonstrations were thorough. We undertook a trial period of the program and engaged students with below age-related English skills. During the trial, we found that the students engaged well with the program, particularly students who can find learning in the classroom a challenge.
Disaffected students engaged well with the program and their progress is evident. “The students engage well with the program and they enjoy the competitive nature of streaks. Some students who can struggle to maintain focus in class have engaged fully with the program, with some accessing the program at home during the holiday time. One student who began the course in late March has already completed over 35 hours, gained 9 complete levels and is working towards Age Related Expectations. His behaviour and engagement in school have significantly improved.
We have developed a Lexia Leader board, and this student is currently in the first place and is very proud of his achievement, as are we. The program is tailored to each individual student and they can be at differing levels in the three strands and has been interesting to view their levels and interpret some of their behaviours due to either their strong word skills, but poor comprehension, thus they have all the words they need, but sometimes do not comprehend when it is time to stop, or simply weak word skills, which means they can find it difficult to select the vocabulary to explain themselves. We have now enrolled with Lexia, based on the content and delivery of the program and because student feedback was they wanted to keep it. [it is]… A very engaging program, pitched at the correct level for each individual, with support lesson plans for students who are struggling with a particular area and skill builders to consolidate their learning. I would recommend this program for any student with literacy difficulties.
If you can imagine all the initiatives, resources and programs that are out there where companies try to put a hard sell on us and then have very little after sale support, you [Lexia] blow them out of the water. Your manner and genuine support mean a lot to us.
The majority of pupils using PowerUp are making more than expected progress in their reading ages and are becoming more confident readers. They are really enjoying the competitive element when they gain streaks and the variety of tasks matching all learning styles that Power Up offers. Pupils love managing their own lesson progress and seeing how much weekly usage they have left. As a teacher, I find the personalised lessons and skill builders are excellent resources to fill in literacy gaps for pupils who are struggling and the whole school reports are invaluable and a great aid to support literacy across the whole curriculum.
The children are very motivated to work through the levels and compete against one another comparing who is on what level. The reports are an instant visual for progress from where the children started to where they are now. Seeing the visual graphs to show how the children have progressed is really useful. The parent reports are also really useful.
One of the biggest drivers is that the children know straight away when they have achieved. The program is personalised to each individual and this has really stretched some of our more able readers. The teacher resources and reports are easy to populate and analyse. Lexia has also allowed our children to work independently and peer collaboratively.
The class I taught last year, in Year 6, had been my class for 2 years and had begun to access Lexia when they were in Year 5. I firmly believe that the program helped and supported them to get the great results which they achieved in all areas of the English related SATs: 76% achieved the EXS in Reading, 83% achieved the EXS in Writing and 79% achieved EXS in the GPS paper. All of these exceeded the national average. I felt that, due to running Lexia, I rarely had to teach a discrete grammar, punctuation or spelling lesson and tended to do this within writing sessions consolidating work and learning carried out through the children’s Lexia program.
We have definitely seen a positive impact, last year’s SAT results in GPAS were some of the highest we have had and Lexia played a huge role in this. It supports the teaching of spelling, punctuation and grammar in lessons really well. Children are well aware of their levels and what they need to do to progress, they become quite competitive! Guy Rundle, Assistant Head Teacher
Lexia is really good as it focuses children on the aspects of reading that they struggle with and breaks that element of reading down in simpler chunks to try and support the child’s understanding. It’s levelled stages mean that children also manage to make progress and are getting challenged progressively as they work through the program. Finally, the fact that teachers themselves do not have to be too actively involved in the setting up of tasks means that it doesn’t take up too much of the time nor do the children lose their reading opportunities while waiting for their teacher to put more activities on the platform (an issue that happens with other online reading programs).
Once a child has completed a level, I send the skills builders home for the children to complete with their parents and I find this is a great way of getting parents involved and enthusiastic to encourage their children to use Lexia more at home.
We noticed at the end of May when we analysed the standardised scores of the children in literacy that all children who had been doing Lexia since Christmas had made improvements in their scores from the previous year. I set termly targets for each child as to what level I want them to aim towards completing by the end of term and most children are eager to reach these targets.