Friday, November 9, 2018

Core5 Student Dashboard

Question from a client who uses  the student dashboard to set time goals for their students.  If the dash board says they need 10 more minutes to meet their target then the teacher has the student work 10 more minutes. After 10 minutes of time, for example, the dashboard over reports the number of minutes. The student worked 10 but the dashboard reports that they worked 15 minutes.

Answer from Lexia Customer Support 11/8/2018
The student dashboard is in some ways a stopwatch, that checks the time when students log in and increases as time goes by. The key to note is that the time that is displayed for a single session of use will not be directly added to the myLexia reports if it is inaccurate. The tracking is entirely different, as the reports are based off of communication times between the program and the server, which do not take the actual clock on the machine into account.

This in mind, behavior like this has been noted and our development team is looking into a way to prevent incorrect Usage times from being displayed while students are working. While it doesn't pose an issue in terms of actual Usage tracking in reports, they fully understand why it isn't always ideal in a classroom setting.  

Friday, October 26, 2018

PowerUp and RAPID Questions

RAPID Question re: sample size used for the percentile scores.

RAPID technical manual, Chapter 5: Psychometric Development. Here is the relevant section from the manual:

"Students in grades kindergarten through twelve from multiple school districts throughout Florida participated in the linking study. Students completed RAPID tasks for their grade level, and their performance informed the estimation and evaluation of item parameters and student performance score distributions for each task and grade level. From this norming sample, a total of 44,780 students across the districts participated in these calibration and validation studies."

The Technical Manual contains a table in Chapter 5 that breaks down how many students from each grade were sampled for each of the RAPID tasks if you would like to more thoroughly explore that data.

Technical Manual for Rapid v4.0

NOTE: PowerUp is recommended for students with RAPID RSP scores under 70

? re: Resetting PowerUp Placement
If your students were given assistance during the PowerUp auto placement activities for Word Study and Grammar, you can reset students' placements in these two strands without impacting their Comprehension placement or their RAPID results. This process will need to be performed one student at a time. Here are the instructions to do so.

1) Ensure the students you need to edit placement for are not currently logged in to PowerUp. If they are, instruct them to log out.
2) Log in to myLexia with your school email address.
3) Click the Manage button on the left side of the page. Its icon looks like a flow chart.
4) Click the Students tab at the top of the page. Locate one of the students whose placement in Grammar and Word Study should be reset and click the pencil button to that student's right.
5) In the Edit Student window that appears, click Program at the top and select the option Edit Placement In Lexia PowerUp. You will see three Edit buttons appear. Click the first button to edit the Word Study placement.
6) From the Zone pulldown menu that appears, select the option Auto Placement and click Update. You will return to the Program tab. Follow the same steps for the Grammar strand. Once both Word Study and Grammar have been reset to the auto placement, click Save at the bottom of the page. Your student can now log back in to PowerUp and redo the auto placement for Word Study and Grammar. Repeat these steps as necessary for any other students.

Ideas for ways to assist in motivating students using PowerUp (ideas from Kathleen, 12/5/2018)

  • Many schools use the streaks to help with motivation.  They can post the class streak leader, or have students keep a log of their own streaks.  
  • Some classrooms try to emphasize units gained each week. Units are not connected to a level so we do not have to worry about publicizing the level the student is on and possibly embarrassing them.   
  • Amira also developed this goal setting doc which can help students set goals for themselves.
  • Teachers can be creative with how to reward or celebrate the students who meet their goals and/or are leading the class with streaks or units.  
  • Finally, I hope the most motivating factor is that this will help students be more confident in their reading.  Going back to the why and how Lexia will help the students is hopefully the most powerful motivation there is.  


Saturday, September 8, 2018

What's Next for Students Who Finish Core5?

What's Next for Students Who Finish Core5?
  • Show teachers the Close Reading passages for higher level thinking.  Go to the Core5 Resources Hub here and find the Lexia Close Reads Overview.
  • Check to see that the student has completed Lexia Skill Builders for each of the levels s/he has completed.  Skill Builders are designed to reinforce and extend online learning.  If not, assign Skill Builders for students to complete offline.
  • Lexia Connection, particularly the Curriculum Links section, can also be used to provide additional practice opportunities and will further strengthen a student's understanding concepts.
  • Work collaboratively (teachers, coaches, and others) to review data to identify areas of strength and opportunities for reinforcement and determine what additional support may be needed.  Consider each student on a case-by-case basis.  While you may have multiple students who complete Core5 at the same time, individual needs will differ.
  • Review and interpret data from myLexia such as the Student Skills Report in conjunction with additional data sources like classroom performance or outside assessments.  If there are activities from previous levels that are completed with low accuracy and slow rate, consider providing the Lexia Lesson(s) associated with that activity and/or reassigning the Skill Builders for that activity.
  • If multiple data points suggest that a particular student still needs additional practice with the content in Core5, it is possible to re-assign the student to the Auto Placement to allow them to re-enter the program.  It is important to note that all records of the student's previous work will be deleted if Auto Placement is used a second time.  In this situation, it is also recommended that you prepare students so they understand that they may see some familiar content.
  • Every student benefits from additional practice.  Lexia provides a number of additional resources including Supplemental Comprehension Lessons and full-text passages for additional fluency and comprehension work with connected text.  See the Resources tab of myLexia.com for these materials.
  • Identify and recommend books for students to read independently.
  • When students finish Level 18, they will have read passages with Lexile levels up 1000L.  You can use this as a guide for choosing the most appropriate selections.
  • Print certificates, including the Core5 Completion Certificate, to celebrate each student's accomplishments.  Be sure to send the certificates home;  encourage parents to use the additional ideas for reinforcement found on certification and ask their children to talk about what skills they have gained which are outlined on certificates.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

PowerUp and RAPID placement activities

The folks at Lexia Customer Support got back to me regarding sequencing the RAPID Assessment and the PowerUp auto placement.

If a student takes the RAPID assessment, they will only take the Word Study and Grammar sections of the PowerUp Auto Placement. That being said, there you are able to sequence these two activities in what ever way works best for you.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

English Language Learners

C5 vocab word list
5/8/2018
The curriculum team was able to respond and provide me with the attached document, which lists vocabulary words from Core5 Levels 1-9. It is not an exhaustive list of all of the words in the program, but I hope it helps! We are hoping to have a Core5 vocabulary list available in the Resources Hub at some point in the future, but do not currently have a time frame. 

NOTE: Core5 uses Brazilian Portuguese

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Ways to Introduce students

A client asked if there was a quick introduction video just for the kiddos (not for teachers) to watch that maybe gives them an overview or a "get started" fun video? If there is something like this, can you send me a link? 

My colleague Suzy responded.
There is not, but i’v had teachers use the video on this page with both parents and students.  It's a different purpose— more of a “rah rah” than how to, but it’s uplifting.


Most of our teachers use the Teacher Demo and explain the red apple, progress bars, and the rest of the icons.  Hope this helps.  I think Beth is on a webinar right now, but she always has wonderful ideas up her sleeve! She’ll be able to chime in later.

It might be fun to use an interactive white board and have students work through an activity together.

response from Lexia Customer Support. 5/7/2018
Thank you for your question. There are no instructional videos for students, but teachers can certainly use the demo version to walk their students through the program. Core5 also actively explains itself to students as they go along. I have let our developers know that instructional videos for students is a desired feature (JIRA ticket LIM-1707)