LEARNING MADE EASY WITH LEXIA

Chapel Allerton Primary School is an inner-city, multicultural primary school with 406 children in main stream education and a 39 place Nursery. 52% of pupils are white monolingual English speakers and 48% made up of 15 different ethnic minorities. For 3 years Anne Longley has been the Deputy Head Teacher and 2 years ago, she further expanded her role to include that of Special Needs Co-ordinator.

With a range of needs from hearing impairment, partial sight, Downs syndrome, Sickle Cell Anemia, cognitive development issues and speech problems, Anne needed to find teaching aids that would offer a helpful learning tool for all. She began looking for suitable resources to help the special needs pupils develop their skills in interesting and stimulating environments. Anne explains how she initially discovered Lexia, “We receive lots of information through the post about different things we could buy to help the children to learn and reinforce their skills. The Lexia flyer caught my eye and it sounded very interesting. I was initially impressed by the fact that it emphasized phonics-based learning, which is particularly helpful for special needs children.”

Anne sent away for the 60-day free trial of Lexia and found it to be exactly the type of software program she had been looking for. The first pupils to use Lexia Reading System were a selection of Year 5 children with word-building difficulties. Once Anne had showed them how to use both the software and the laptops it had been installed on, she was confident that the children could work independently with the support of a Special Needs Assistant.

The trial period was very successful and Anne was able to order 3 full licenses, which have been in use for 6 months now. Once the full licenses were installed, the school started using the software with some of the older pupils with remedial phonics difficulties. Anne continues, “They enjoyed the prospect of doing their work on computers, being able to work independently and progress at their own pace.

The older children can often be very self-conscious and have low self-esteem. Lexia’s software enables them to improve not only their learning skills, but also their social skills, as the groups are often split into pairs to work.” She adds, “Sometimes a less-able child might be paired with a more able child so they can motivate each other. Sometimes two children on a similar level will work together so they can drive each other onto the next stage.”

Anne used a rolling training plan with her special needs pupils, starting with 2 laptops loaded with the software. Once these users were proficient, she introduced another 2 who were shown the basics and then encouraged to ask the initial pupils if they had any queries. Again, this helped improve communication and social interaction within the group. Once up to 6 pupils, the group was complete, but the ongoing plan is to provide Lexia’s software to Key Stage 1 pupils to reinforce lessons learnt in the classroom. Chapel Allerton is planning to install Lexia Reading System in its ICT Suite, where it has 18 PCs. By working in pairs, a full class would be able to use the software to help its development.

“As the children are using the software, another advantage is the way it is self-correcting,” comments Anne. “They are told whether they have succeeded or not with each exercise by the program, so they are always striving to be accurate to the best of their ability. Lexia also provides individual performance reports for the children, parents and teachers. This is one additional function that Anne is keen to start using. “I hope this element of the software is as well-accepted as the rest has been, and we’re looking forward to seeing its capabilities.”

Anne concludes, “We are very pleased with Lexia to date and I am keen for the whole school to benefit from its approach. There are elements that would be extremely helpful to reinforce our traditional teaching methods and once we have installed the software in our ICT Suite, all our pupils will be able to share it and benefit from it.”