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LEARNING MADE EASY WITH LEXIA
Brighouse High School is a comprehensive school, based just outside Huddersfield, West Yorkshire and currently catering for 1250 pupils. The school is included in the Ofsted list of the top 100 best-improved secondary schools for the past 12 months, and is the only secondary school in Yorkshire to have been awarded Business and Enterprise status. Over the last 3 years, it has achieved above 60% A-C GCSE results.
With 1250 pupils, all with individual needs, Brighouse High School places great importance on the personal development of its students, not least those with Special Needs. An essential element of the school’s work is with its 31 statemented pupils who have basic skills deficiencies in literacy and mathematics. There are a variety of special needs within the Special Needs department, including dyspraxia and dyslexia, but in addition is Calderdale LEA’s secondary resource for visually impaired children. As its hearing-impaired pupils, these children are fully integrated into the schooling at Brighouse receiving support from the Special Needs department where necessary.
Children at entry level for Brighouse High School take nationally recognised tests, including the Cognitive Ability Test to gauge reasoning ability. These are then used in conjunction with their primary school results to predict SATS and GCSE results. Those children who are identified as having poor reading/literacy skills for their age are encouraged to attend Reading Workshops to develop their skills. Special Needs Co-ordinator, Martin Wolfenden explains, “Some children may have a reading age of at least 2 years below their chronological age and may require intensive teaching methods to help them develop their skills. In order to provide these children with the quality of learning needed to help their skills develop, we have looked into using educational software as an aid. We run Reading Workshops every day and some children might attend up to three times a week to help their skills development.”
Martin discovered Lexia Reading System that offered complementary exercises to the programs he was using; Lexia includes a phonics-based approach specifically designed for students to practice their phonemic awareness, sound-symbol correspondence, word attack skills and early comprehension skills. Martin continues, “We installed Lexia on 8 workstations and used our assessments from the Reading Workshops to identify which children would benefit the most from using Lexia.” He adds, “The program is very simple for the children to use. We show the group how it works and then are able to step back to let them get on individually at their own pace.”
Whilst Lexia has 4 levels of skill for the child to achieve, each individual pupil can progress at their own speed and start at the level most suited to their needs. Each child’s progression is monitored as they learn and Lexia’s Quick Reading Test offers testing with both proper and nonsense words, showing which area the child should start at. Some may need to start at exercise one, module one, whilst some might need very specific areas of the program, for example, developing their use of vowels.
Originally, Brighouse bought the Lexia licence for two machines, but had no problem convincing the school to purchase more copies. Martin adds, “For Special Needs, if we are to raise the achievements of the children, this must start with the development of their reading skills. In the Reading Workshops, the children are asked to attend at a level that will best help them develop their skills.” He continues, “These classes also help the children access other teaching materials from other subjects as well, simply by improving their reading level and consequently improving their understanding.”
Brighouse High School’s Special Needs teams can work with 16 pupils each hour with its 8 stations programmed with Lexia. This was impossible with one-to-one tuition, which was very time-consuming. Lexia is being used in conjunction with other learning software, working well in partnership with different programs that include reading exercises to improve literacy.
It is typical for Brighouse pupils to spend half a session on Lexia and half a session reading. This can make a huge difference to the development of the child, simply by applying their learning in different ways. What they absorb through the Lexia program, they can use and build on by supporting this style of learning with the more traditional teaching method of reading. The combination of different styles of teaching keeps the children focused and allows them to see the practical application of the skills they are learning.
As soon as the child accesses Lexia Reading System, they are shown their current achievement level and can see what their objectives are in a simple graph. This provides the child with the motivation to move higher up the graph with each session and because they can see this for themselves, they do not need one-to-one supervision when using the program. The child’s progress is not registered until each unit has been completed with competency and fluency in each skill, so the teaching staff can be confident that the child will be able to use the skills they have learned once each unit is completed.
A new addition to Brighouse Special Needs is the Lexia Quick Learning Test. “Initial feedback is positive,” states Martin. “The test needs to be supervised, but saves us time over the traditional testing methods. It provides us with graphic and tabular reports that we can use to see the child’s specific strengths and weaknesses, which are essential to their development.”
The Quick Reading Test scores and interprets student responses automatically, reporting in precise and straightforward graphs and tables. These illustrate particular areas where the child needs more practice or instruction and reports can be created either for the individual child, or for the whole class. The results then form the basis of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for each child that takes 5-8 minutes to complete.
“The children enjoy being able to see their progress in graphical format and also like to be able to take printouts of their progression home. This is extremely motivating for them and allows them to share their progress with their parents,” comments Martin. “When teaching children of 11-13 and above, they may be at the reading level of an 8 year old,” he adds. “No-one has said they don’t like using the software and one reason for its popularity amongst the older pupils is that there’s no-one looking over their shoulders. It’s a bit like reading Janet and John in the privacy of their bedrooms. This isn’t something they would do in the lounge, potentially embarrassing themselves in front of siblings or parents. They have the personal attention of the PC and respond very positively to this. Lexia helps to improve their self-esteem by providing motivating and individual tuition at a steady progressive pace that suits their needs.”
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