8/2/2021

Lexia’s Products are Back-to-School Ready for 2021–22

As teachers prepare for a return to in-person instruction, the focus is turning to how the tools they know and trust can help them in addressing the unique and individual challenges students will be facing come fall.

At Lexia, we’ve been thinking along the same lines. We’re committed to providing support for administrators, teachers, parents, and students as we continue into another year of change in the classroom. That’s why we’re sharing highlights of what’s new with our expanded suite of products and services and why we prioritized these updates for the 2021–2022 school year.

What’s New with Core5

Early Comprehension Enhancements

As students return to school, we expect there will be some adjustments from the social and emotional impact of the last year. We know how important it is to provide a learner and educator experience that validates and affirms diverse experiences and that avoids perpetuating or endorsing negative biases or stereotypes.

This year, we’re introducing eight revised and updated K–2 comprehension activities with 28 new and enhanced stories that will promote engagement, academic-language development, and an inclusive understanding of the world. We’ve expanded our use of diverse and multidimensional characters so we can reflect diverse student populations and more students can see themselves in the work.

Passage Fluency Upgrades

Core5 still includes seven Passage Fluency Activities across grades 2–5. These activities are designed for students to read on-level text accurately and fluently to support comprehension. In each unit, students still read and fill in missing words in passages, but we have made some thoughtful changes to how these activities are conducted.

Beginning with this school year, students will engage in shared reading at the beginning of each unit. Shared reading supports word recognition and expressive reading, both of which are related to fluency and comprehension. Learners will now follow along as the beginning of the passage is read aloud with synchronized highlighting of the text. Students also have opportunities to reread portions of passages, an instructional strategy with robust evidence for supporting fluency development.

As part of this update, there will no longer be a student-facing timer. A reader’s rate is a useful measurement of reading fluency, but timed reading should not be the primary focus for fluency Instruction. Students’ words per minute will be measured and reported in myLexia®, but progress through the activity will be based only on accuracy and not be dependent on reading rate.

Also updated:

• Lexia Fluency Passage Packs for grades K-1 and K–5 to help students practice reading fluency with accuracy, automaticity, and prosody
• An appendix for K–3 with target phonics and word analysis patterns, as well as high-frequency words, for each passage

Digital Formats for Instructional Resources

If the last year has taught us anything, it is the importance of having instructional resources in formats that can easily transition from in-person to remote and hybrid instruction. With that in mind, we now offer the following resources in convenient digital formats that are interactive and engaging. These materials are easy to access, present, and modify, so they are ready to go when needed:

Digital Lexia Skill Builders®

New digital Skill Builders provide the same opportunities to apply key literacy skills and strategies as Core5’s paper-based ones, while expanding student access and eliminating the need for printing. Teachers can assign them via Google Classroom™ and other learning management systems, and students can complete digital Skill Builders on a tablet, Chromebook™, laptop, or computer.

Lexia Lessons® Slide Decks

Core5 now offers Lexia Lesson Slide Decks for all lessons in the Phonics and Structural Analysis strands. Lexia Lessons can be presented as Google Slides or downloaded to be used with PowerPoint and customized as needed. Slide Decks include visuals and lesson plans, optimized for presentation in the classroom or in a remote learning environment.

What’s New with PowerUp

Closed Captioning

All PowerUp videos now include closed captioning for greater accessibility. Students may select this visual support for the audio.

Digital Formats for Instructional Resources

We knew the flexibility of having digital versions of instructional resources would be just as welcome for PowerUp users. See the descriptions above in Core5 for details.

• Digital Lexia Skill Builders
• Lexia Lessons Slide Decks (Note: Slide Decks are only available for Word Study in PowerUp)

Two New Foundational Levels of Word Study

PowerUp has added two new levels to Word Study that also include 44 new Lexia Lessons and two new Skill Builders. The new levels were designed to support students with gaps in their foundational reading skills that impact their development of word recognition, fluency, and reading comprehension. With these new levels, students can build phonological awareness skills while also developing sound-symbol knowledge for consonants, digraphs, and short vowels.

These new Word Study levels are designed to address gaps in secondary students’ foundational reading skills. Based on our initial research, we found that there was a subset of current PowerUp users that could benefit from this added content. For these students, these new early levels provide explicit instruction to support progress in later levels.

With this update, PowerUp better meets the many district- and state-level requirements for foundational reading programs and provides better support for emerging bilingual students.

Auto-Placement Improvements

Our auto-placement process has been improved to speed the placement of each student in the appropriate program level based on their performance. For this update, the average length of the PowerUp auto-placement has been substantially reduced.

Auto-placement is a one-time evaluation. Students can now complete the three-part auto-placement in as little as 30 minutes while still benefiting from the 180 profile options that start them exactly where they need to be in each strand.

Expanded On-Demand Instruction (ODI)

We’re making On-Demand Instruction available across all three strands of PowerUp: Word Study, Grammar, and Comprehension.

Now students are only one click away from additional support while they are working in these programs. They can easily access a set of reference materials directly related to the skill being worked on by clicking the Hints button. This option is helpful during classroom or at-home sessions and as an aid for teachers or parents to provide just-in-time intervention if they see a student who needs additional support in the program.

What’s New with Lexia® English Language Development™

The product formerly known as Rosetta Stone® English is now Lexia® English Language Development™. While its curriculum remains the same, Lexia English offers new tools to help Emergent Bilingual students as they learn academic English and empowers educators to streamline instruction.

Under its new name, this state-of-the-art, award-winning program supports Lexia’s commitment to Emergent Bilingual students. Lexia English joins the suite of proven Lexia literacy and professional learning solutions that enhance equity and help all students reach their academic potential. This year especially, we’re excited to give educators another tool to give Emergent Bilinguals a boost in acquiring higher-language proficiency.

Auto-Placement Tool

The in-program auto-placement tool for new students is now available in Lexia English. This one-time placement tool identifies the correct entry point into the program by assessing both students’ receptive and productive language skills, which allows teachers to place learners at the appropriate proficiency band.

Digital Formats for Instructional Resources

Just as we’ve done for Core5 and PowerUp, we have adapted our Lexia Lessons for Lexia English into digital formats. These scripted, explicit lesson plans guide educators in providing targeted practice and support the need for teacher-led instruction.

The Lexia English Speaking Teacher-Led Lesson Slide Decks will be available on the Support for Instruction page of the Resources Hub.

Speech Recognition Engine’s Ongoing Optimization

At Lexia, we’re always looking for ways to improve our products. Since the launch of Lexia English in 2020, we’ve collected and analyzed large samples of field data from schools and districts across the nation. Using this data, we’ve retrained the Speech Recognition Engine’s machine learning algorithm and significantly improved its accuracy.

The speech recognition engine has been optimized for the Lexia English curriculum and language frame speaking activities, and provides students with immediate, guided, corrective feedback in a safe, nonjudgmental environment.

Engagement and Feature Updates

Lexia English characters now have culturally relevant Fun Facts to share! Students expand their appreciation for learning about other cultures, languages, food, and communities as our characters reveal relevant facts about themselves. Each character presents two new Fun Facts from within each level, totaling 152 unique and engaging facts.

For students working in Levels 12 and beyond, we’ve also added nine new unit reward animations. These new rewards provide variety and are age-appropriate for continued motivation in the upper levels of Lexia English.

Welcome Back to School

At Lexia, we value our customers and make sure to keep our products and services aligned with their needs and priorities. Many of the updates introduced for this coming school year reflect feedback from educators, and we are excited for you to put them to work helping students get back on track. Keep those suggestions coming!