Teaching vs. Technology: Why It’s Not A Zero-Sum Game

Teachers are integral to an effective literacy program. They build connections with students daily and provide targeted feedback about student progress. However, staff shortages, large class sizes, classroom management issues, and administrative tasks reduce instructional time. A recent EdWeek survey revealed a typical teacher worked 54 hours a week but spent less than half that time in the school building teaching students. 

While technology can support instruction, some parents and educators fear it could depersonalize learning or lead to technology overuse—or even misuse. Used correctly, the right tools can support good teaching. Tools like Lexia® Core5® Reading facilitate personalized instruction by providing scaffolding, data-driven insights, and embedded assessments, freeing teachers to focus on what matters most—their students. 

When talking to teachers and parents, explaining how technology supports personalized instruction can feel like an uphill battle. By showing them the features of Core5 and how it positively impacts student growth, you can help them better understand how it complements—rather than competes with—pedagogy and learning.

Adaptive Blended Learning Enhances Face-To-Face Learning

Adaptive Blended Learning leverages the strengths of educational technology and teacher-led instruction to provide individualized support to students at scale. Rather than compete with classroom instruction, tools like Core5 provide personalized pathways for literacy learning. For example, Core5 contributes to these student success factors:

• Adapts to each student’s abilities. Core5 includes scaffolding and adaptive technology that keeps below-grade level, on-grade level, and advanced students engaged. Students who struggle with a particular skill can progress at their own pace and receive additional instructional support through a structured approach. Advanced students can move forward within the Core5 platform.
  
  
• Captures student data. When you can record student progress at a granular level, it’s much easier to identify and respond to learning gaps. As part of their blended learning programs, some school leaders rely on tools that may expose students to essential skills and concepts. However, they cannot record and report student data back to the teacher—requiring educators to spend extra time gathering progress-monitoring data through assessments or other means. Because Core5 collects student data in real time, teachers immediately know which students have completed activities in each skill area and which could benefit from additional small-group or individual instruction. Data from Core5 can also inform teachers' future small-group or whole-classroom lessons.
  
  
• Provides extra resources for teacher-led instruction. When you understand where your students lack resources, you’re much more likely to use the right tools to get them on track. Core5 connects student performance data to specific instructional strategies to help students grasp literacy concepts. School leaders dramatically improve teacher effectiveness when tools recommend interventions and bridge teacher-led instruction with assessment and personalized learning.

  
  

  

Gets Critical Insights in Real Time

Core5 continuously gathers data about students’ performance as they progress through activities with embedded assessments. Based on this data, the platform adjusts its scaffolding, ensuring students work within their optimal learning zones. For example, if a student struggles with a phonics activity, the program provides additional scaffolding and practice in that area. If a student demonstrates proficiency, they can move ahead.

Powered by Assessment Without Testing®, teacher-accessible data dashboards quickly provide detailed, real-time insights. Educators can look at student progress metrics, areas of strength, and specific areas that require additional support. Teachers also receive recommendations for targeted instructional activities to address these gaps. This functionality helps teachers build stronger relationships in these ways:

• Helps group students appropriately. Core5 identifies students with similar needs, allowing teachers to form small instructional groups or provide one-on-one intervention based on real-time analytics.
  
  
• Makes progress monitoring easier. Core5 tracks progress toward meeting grade-level benchmarks and standards. It provides visual reports that help educators identify trends, celebrate growth, and plan interventions proactively.
  
  
• Suggests interventions based on the data collected. Core5 flags cases for teachers when students struggle to progress, providing them with specific strategies or printable resources to reinforce skills in areas where students are experiencing difficulty.
  
  
• Allows administrators to quickly understand how their students are progressing. Core5 prevents teachers from manually collecting and analyzing data that needs to be shared with principals and other leaders. After just one month of Core5 use, Assessment Without Testing identifies a student’s overall performance level and predicts their likelihood of reaching their end-of-year, grade-level benchmark.

Preparing Students for a Technology-Driven World

Digital technologies are now a large part of our lives, so we must help students build the digital skills needed to succeed in college and their careers. In 2023, the National Skills Coalition (NSC), in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, released Closing the Digital Skill Divide. This report examines the digital skills workers need in the United States and concludes that 92% of jobs require digital skills. 

Effective, research-based technology tools go beyond playing games. They ask students to use their critical thinking skills to solve problems and demonstrate their knowledge. For example, Core5’s reading comprehension activities promote active reading skills and critical engagement with texts. Students must analyze stories, identify key features, sequence events, and determine the main ideas and details.

• As students advance through the program, they encounter more complex texts and tasks designed to develop higher-order thinking skills. These include interpreting an author's craft, drawing evidence to support conclusions, and connecting information across texts.

• Core5 presents informational texts in different formats, such as diagrams and slideshows. This variety challenges students to think about how information might be presented differently.

• The texts in Core5 are organized around content-area themes, encouraging students to build knowledge and think critically across content areas.

Best of all, Core5 promotes a growth mindset by giving students choice over their learning paths and pace, encouraging them to set goals, see their progress, and celebrate their achievements.

How You Can Support Core5 Usage With Teachers

Teachers appreciate technology assistance, particularly with tools they need more experience using. You can help educators build confidence by scheduling regular training or offering to work with professional learning communities. In your training sessions, you can troubleshoot any technology issues teachers may encounter or answer questions about Core5 and ways its features can support instruction.

Whether your district is 1:1 or shares devices, your teachers can use Core5  with fidelity. 

If you are in a 1:1 district, you can effectively implement Core5 in these ways:

• Individual learning: Students can access Core5 on their personal devices during designated literacy blocks or independent work time.
  
  
• Flexible learning: Teachers can incorporate Core5 into daily instruction and let students access Core5 as needed.
  
  
• Targeted interventions: Teachers can work with students individually or in small groups and have them work on Core5 lessons on their computers.

If your school is not in a 1:1 district, there are other ways you can encourage your teachers to implement Core5.

• Teachers can set up computer stations in classrooms and dedicate at least one station to Core5 work. They can also schedule regular visits to your computer lab or borrow devices from shared device carts or mobile labs that move between classrooms, which allows multiple classes to share devices. 
  
  
• Because Core5 licenses can be installed on multiple devices, you can encourage teachers to have students access the program on personal devices for extra practice.

Save Teacher Time With Targeted Resources

Lexia® programs reduce teacher prep time with targeted resources for teacher-led instruction and independent practice. Core5 offers a robust library of instructional materials from the myLexia Resources Page that can be used offline.

• Lexia Lessons®: Teachers can access scripted, explicit lesson plans directly from the myLexia platform to guide them in providing targeted intervention to individual students, small groups, or the whole class.
  
  
• Lexia Connections®: These downloadable activity suggestions build content-area connections across science, math, and social studies. Connections activities integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Core5 and can be used with individual students, small groups, or in whole-class instruction.
  
  
• Lexia Skill Builders®: When students complete a program level, teachers can download practice materials automatically recommended in myLexia. Skill Builders can be completed independently or with classmates.
  
  

Other offline resources that can be downloaded from the Core5 Resource Hub include:

• Flashcards—To help students learn root words, rhyming words, and more
  
  
• Lexia Lesson Slide Decks
  
  
• Core5 Fluency Passage Packs
  
  
• Writing Prompt Pack
  
  
• Level- and Grade-Aligned Home Activity Suggestions
  
  

Technology complements high-quality teaching and shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for face-to-face instruction. With Lexia’s real-time progress monitoring and targeted resources, educators can focus on meaningful interactions in the classroom.

For students, programs like Core5 can encourage a growth mindset and higher-order thinking, in addition to improving literacy skills, both on and off the computer. 

When used intentionally, technology isn’t just a tool—it’s a catalyst for personalized learning and accelerated growth, stronger student-teacher connections, and overall academic success.

Looking for partnership support to make your implementation even more effective? Lexia Success Partnerships can set up your district for success.