Behind the A.T.E. Ball
by David A. Valentine
(previously posted on Digital Educator's Blog)
There are many schools who use Lexia Reading to improve their students English language vocabulary, grammar and comprehension scores, especially among ELD students. Normally, to get at the assessment data for each student you would use your laptop or desktop computer's network connection. At the Alexander Science Center School (Exposition Park, next to the California Science Center) in South Los Angeles, grades 1 thru 5 use the 35 desktop, Computer Lab to give an entire classroom equal time on Lexia. Ideally, this would be the perfect opportunity for teachers to review the performance goals of at risk students with lexiareading.com on their laptops. However, teachers are not always inclined to tote their bulky laptops to the lab.
Enter, Lexia Reading's fabulous app for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch to track individual students, individual classroom to grade level, or school to school reading achievements for teachers, paraprofessionals and reading intervention specialists who currently use the cloud based application.
Lexia Reading for the iPad
In the above illustration, with the app in Student mode, the class roster (left side column) appears as a vertical list. Touch a student's name (green highlight) and his/her multiple level statistics appear on the right side of the screen. The app tracks CVCC, CCVC and CVC information. It also takes pains to identify the words, vowels and consonants the student is struggling with and lists them.
In the second section on the right, under the heading Assessment the app shows the most recent Skills Levels, a Performance graph and a Usage graph. Below that, Usage breaks down to greater detail with the student's weekly average, total time on the app, and the last log in!
At Alexander Science Center School reading intervention specialists and psychologists have occasionally provided copies of Lexia Reading to parents of at risk students on CD, so their children can work with the program at home. The iPhone/iPod Touch graphical displays of Lexia data can be an effective tool to keep parents informed of student assessment targets, vs the child's actual performance level anytime, anywhere, not just at Parent/Teacher or IEP conferences.
A very useful real time data capture feature was recently added in the latest version of the app. Lexia Reading now makes it possible to track the progress of a student while she is actually working with the program. Doing this in real time can improve the student's percent chance of hitting grade level benchmarks.Teachers and reading intervention specialists can easily assess the amount of individual attention a student will need to achieve those goals as he is using the app!
The Lexia Reading app for iPad, IPhone and iPod Touch is a FREE download from Apple's App Store for current Lexia subscribers. If your school does not have a Lexia Reading subscription, and you'd like to learn more about their products, go to: http://lexialearning.com
