Lexia Power Up Literacy (PowerUp) is intended to improve English language arts instruction for struggling and non-proficient readers in grades 6-12. PowerUp intends to accelerate the development of both essential reading and higher-order thinking skills through adaptive learning paths by combining online student-driven explicit instruction with offline teacher-delivered courses and activities. PowerUp identifies skill gaps and provides tailored, systematic education in Word Study, Grammar, and Comprehension to a wide spectrum of children, from struggling to virtually proficient readers. This explicit training helps students to understand and engage with difficult texts in a variety of genres. Teachers can give the exact teaching each student requires thanks to embedded progress monitoring, actionable statistics, and prepared courses.
What is Lexia Power Up Literacy?
PowerUp is a computer-based tool that tailors training to the unique needs of adolescent students. PowerUp activities supplement and expand on your school’s English Language Arts curriculum by concentrating on building reading skills in three areas: word study, grammar, and comprehension.
How does Lexia Power Up Works?
Students begin at the appropriate position in each section of the program depending on the results of a brief set of placement activities.
Students are given a weekly objective of 75-135 minutes each week. Total time comprises 25-45 minutes for each of the program’s three components (Word Study, Grammar, and Comprehension). This weekly target gradually diminishes as pupils progress. In the student dashboard, students can view their weekly goal.
Direct instruction and immediate feedback are provided as your student learns new skills through online exercises. Teachers are informed of their students’ progress and performance in the program so that they can support them as needed. Paper-and-pencil activities and hands-on activities are utilized to practice and extend abilities.
Outcomes of the Program
PowerUp was tested in a cluster-randomized research with 155 students in grades 6-8 from two Title 1 middle schools. Ten classrooms of kids with reading levels below the 35th percentile were randomly allocated to either Lexia Power Up or business as usual for 40 minutes of daily extra reading instruction. PowerUp pupils fared much better on the STAR Reading Assessment after one semester (effect size = +0.36), qualifying PowerUp for the ESSA “Strong” category.
Lexia Power Up does not necessitate any special qualifications or certification.
Lexia has created a number of professional development packages to help educators use PowerUp with fidelity and provide outstanding student outcomes. A specialized customer success team collaborates with a school or district to tailor each training to their specific goals and timetables. Throughout the year, support includes implementation planning, product training, data reviews, and data coaching. Training events can be held in-person at schools or online.
Staff from schools and districts can also participate in Lexia Academy. Lexia Academy is a self-paced eLearning platform that promotes the professional development of educators. Lexia Academy courses incorporate tools and ideas to help with blended learning, literacy instruction, and product deployment.
Dashboard for Students
When students connect to the program, they can select activities to work on and self-check their progress from their student dashboard.
The program establishes weekly usage time targets for each skill set based on how much work the student needs to do on that strand. When they complete the time goals for one exercise, it is marked as finished, and the student can go on to another.
Skills Addressed in Lexia Power Up
Lexia Power Up promotes Comprehension, Word Study, and Grammar skills up to a Year 9 level, so even fairly proficient Year 7-8 readers will find plenty of challenges. When we strive to understand texts, we use all three of these skill sets.
Word Study (14 different levels)
Students learn automatic word identification as well as multisyllabic academic vocabulary words.
Grammar (7 levels)
In order to improve their comprehension and composition skills, students’ study how words act in sentences as well as how different text types are constructed.
Comprehension (16 degrees)
Students learn new skills and methods. Texts of increasing complexity are used to gain deeper knowledge and meaning.
How will I know which level to begin working on?
After completing an online placement session, Lexia Power Up automatically places students at the appropriate skill level for each of the three skill sets. Each student’s starting combination can be rather distinct; for example, a student may begin with Word Study at a low level, Comprehension in the middle, and Grammar at a higher level.
Checklist for Lexia Power Up
Are you prepared? Ascertain that pupils have everything they need to log in.
- Device with PowerUp capability (computer or iPad).
- Earbuds or headphones.
Information for logging in:
For direct logins, provide each student with a printed login card and either a bookmarked link to lexiapowerup.com or a bookmarked link to PowerUp with the school’s custom URL.
Login information for each student to your school or district’s single sign-on portal is required for single sign-on logins.
Teacher email address: Have a teacher email address handy because children may be asked for one the first time they use PowerUp.
Introduce PowerUp to your pupils! The PowerUp Buttons Guide demonstrates how to use the application.
It’s time to log in!
Depending on your school or district’s configuration, kids will either log in directly to PowerUp or through a portal (such as Clever).
Web browser direct logins: Students should go to lexiapowerup.com or your school or district’s own Lexia Power Up URL. Find out more about personalized links.
Direct iPad logins: Have students launch the PowerUp app on their iPad.
Logins to the portal: Students should log in to the single sign-on gateway and then click on the PowerUp tile.
In schools and districts that utilize Clever to log in to student programs on iPads, iPads must have both the Clever software and the Lexia Power Up app loaded. Students should use the Clever app to log in.
Then there’s Auto Placement!
- When students initially log in to PowerUp, they will begin Auto Placement activities.
- Students can finish the three-part PowerUp Auto Placement in around 30 minutes. Students can complete the Comprehension placement exercise in numerous sittings, but they must complete the Word Study and Grammar placement activities all at once.
- It is preferable if students complete Auto Placement under the guidance of an instructor.
- Encourage your kids to produce their best work so that they can be assigned to the appropriate program level!
- When students complete PowerUp Auto Placement, they are transferred to their placement level and can begin working.
You have completed your first Lexia Power Up session! Make certain that kids understand how to log out.
- Show your kids how to log out of PowerUp when it’s time to stop working.
- Find the logout button in the upper right corner of the PowerUp window. To complete the log out process, students must acknowledge that they want to log out. Make sure they understand how to accomplish this.
- When students log out of PowerUp, they will receive credit for all time spent in the program. Some minutes may not be recorded if students do not log out.
Inform students that it is critical to log out at the conclusion of each session, rather than simply closing the browser window, logging off their computer, or turning off their iPad.
Lexia Power Up Literacy increases literacy improvements for students in grades 6-12 who are at risk of failing to fulfill College and Career Readiness Standards. Lexia Power Up, which is based on reading science and has been shown to be up to five times as successful as the average middle school reading intervention, allows students to achieve multiple years of progress in a single academic year.