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LEARNING MADE EASY WITH LEXIA
St. Patrick’s Boys’ National School is an all boys’ school in Castlebar, Co. Mayo with a total of 450 pupils and 23 teachers. Established in 1888, St. Patrick’s was founded by the De La Salle Brothers, who were invited to educate the children of Castlebar by Canon Patrick Lyons. The school is not without its history, not least for three large-scale closures due to typhoid in 1934, the Big Frost of 1947 and the school fire in 1957. The philosophy of St. Patrick’s has always been to cater for the needs of all its pupils and as part of this aim, the school has nine teachers and eight classroom assistants and the services of a speech therapist to assist children with special needs.
As a resource teacher and ICT Co-ordinator for St. Patrick’s, Adrian Keena first discovered Lexia’s educational software through the close links St. Patrick’s has with the local education centre. “We were invited to review a copy of Lexia Reading System by the Mayo Education Centre, but were initially sceptical,” he explains. “We get offered so much software it is hard to get excited when offered something new, but Lexia was different - it has a clean, clear interface and the voice on the CD is smooth and clear for children to listen to. It is very well structured phonics program and a real joy to use. It’s like having another teacher in the classroom with you.”
Schools in Ireland struggle to receive the same amount of funding as English schools, which makes it difficult to get everyone using Lexia and discovering its benefits, due to the budget issues that many Irish schools face. However, Adrian and his colleague John Culhane, both tutors for the course “ICT’s in Special Needs”, were not to be deterred. “We felt that other teachers in Mayo deserved to know about how Lexia could help their pupils, so we organized an evening demonstration for the local schools. It is very easy to set up and use with little ICT training being required, making it very suitable for teachers and pupils alike.” The hope is that future funding initiatives might pave the way for a wider provision to schools in Ireland.
In the Resource Class in St. Patrick’s there are currently 10 children who have been assessed by the local educational psychologist to establish what specific learning difficulties they have. One child was diagnosed as having average intelligence, but his psychological report showed his progress at reading to be very significantly delayed. Adrian comments, “He already had an interest in computers so being able to learn with Lexia has allowed him to catch up with his own age group’s reading level. This is a phenomenal achievement and has changed this pupil’s life. Traditional methods of teaching fail to motivate him but when a computer is involved and he can see his own progress on the report graph he needed little encouragement and became the first in the resource class to finish Lexia Reading System Levels 1 and 2.” His completion of these levels and his subsequent learning has had a huge impact on his access to all curricular subjects. Whilst a child with below average intelligence may not have progressed through the Lexia levels at quite the same pace, for this pupil, a PC-based program was perfect.
Lexia Reading System is designed for students to work independently listening to verbal instructions and clicking on images with a mouse or typing. The interactive exercises branch off automatically depending on the student’s performance, providing practice on specific areas of difficulty when needed. Lexia enables the progression on to more advanced areas only when the student is ready. Teachers may override the automatic branching function at any time to specify program units or customise exercises for individuals. The activities are intriguing for the students, with formats and graphics that interest, motivate and make practice enjoyable.
Mayo Education Centre was invited to participate in a European funded project examining the integration of ICT’s in Special Needs and due to the initial success of Lexia in St. Patrick’s, the Centre chose to use the software to discover over time, whether a PC-based program could actually improve the learning development of children of mixed ability.
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