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Lexia supports the overall English curriculum, specifically phonics, word meanings, oral language and reading comprehension. It is appropriate for use with students with special educational needs. Lexia can help improve literacy skills across the curriculum for students who normally would be unable to access the curriculum.

I have used Lexia in a resource setting for two years. In my role of resource teacher, I evaluated the software with two third year students and the help of an English Teacher.  One student presented with dyslexia and the other with a Mild General Learning Disability and experienced problems with reading and spelling. They both used Lexia in class independently for four forty-minute periods a week using headphones so as not to distract each other. 

I encouraged the students to start on Level Two as I felt that Level One would not be challenging enough.  However, Level Two proved to be too difficult for both students and they became frustrated when an entire activity had to be repeated after just two errors. To avoid students becoming de-motivated, I encouraged them to restart at Level One, which gave the students confidence in their ability and helped them to fully prepare for the more difficult levels.

One of the students in question used Lexia for the entire year. Initially, she struggled with the program and needed lots of practice at Levels One and Two. The repetitive nature of Lexia aided her in improving her skills. She progressed through Level Four without much difficulty. Her English teacher was amazed at the improvement in her spellings and reading ability.  Her confidence and self-esteem improved and this had a positive effect on all her subject areas for the Junior Certificate. Before she started using Lexia, she described herself as being slow and unable to spell. At the end of the year she was a much more confident student.

Lexia is designed for individual independent learning rather than for use with small groups or whole class settings. The teacher does not have to create additional resources to use Lexia as all the necessary content is already featured on the CD-ROM.  The freedom of working independently appealed to these students, they sought assistance when they had difficulty with a particular activity.  Although Lexia is user friendly, students with significant learning difficulties may need teacher instruction at the earlier levels as they may get frustrated having to repeat activities.  I found teacher intervention to be vital when students started using this program.

The strength of Lexia is that it matches the pace of the user. The interactive branching feature records the units that the students have completed in previous lessons and does not allow the user to progress until they learn the specific skills required. Lexia is designed to repeat units if the student enters too many wrong answers, this encourages concentration on the students’ part. Feedback is instant and is provided in a variety of formats that appeals to the students.

A sample exemplar using this software.

Lexia Exemplar
d2954.PDF
d2954.PDF