Schools spend a considerable amount of time and effort on assessment but do they assess the right things? We are now beginning to realise the need for whole school screening for everything from wellbeing to mental health to dyscalculia and dyslexia. This is one area where technology really can save teachers' time.
There are hundreds of different reading assessments but those that involve a child reading aloud to an adult always have an element of subjectivity. Perhaps the child is shy, perhaps they hesitate because they are distracted. And once we have a measure of a child's poor ability to decode, the assessment doesn't necessarily tell the us where the problem lies. Is the child long sighted? Do they have problems tracking text? Do they have dyslexia?
Back in October TeachingTimes met Lexplore at the TES SEN show and talked to teachers and the exhibitors about why eye gaze worked for schools. Many teachers had seen Lexplore in action the previous April on the BBC One Show.
The programme looked at the impact of the first lockdown on reading and took Benjamin Zephaniah to a primary school to see the technology in action.
Although a well respected poet, author of more than 20 books and a university professor these days, Zephaniah struggled with literacy as a child. He moved school often and was not diagnosed with dyslexia until he was in his twenties. See his report on Lexplore here.
The overwhelming judgment at the TES SEN show was that the software saved time – an obvious benefit - but other visitors talked about how the technology could identify children who get overlooked, children who are not obviously struggling but 'could do better'.
How eye gaze works
Eye gaze is not a new technology and many teachers first came across it as a communication device that let people with severe physical dexterity challenges use Tobii Communication grids to compose messages.
An eye tracker captures and analyses individual eye movements at 90 frames per second. It can see where the gaze falls and for those with physical disabilities a deliberate blink acts as a mouse click letting people select a letter or a word from a grid. The version from Inclusive Technology won many awards but was a solution for a low incidence disability.
What is different with Lexplore is that it uses eye tracking technology to look at how the brain processes text when a child reads. It can be used by all children and will identify 'print disabilities' such as eye tracking issues and signs of dyslexia. It will also show more successful readers who are working below their ability level.
How the test works
A teacher or teaching assistant oversees a short online reading assessment where the student sits in front of a standard computer monitor with an eye tracker attached. They do a short Rapid Automized Naming (RAN) test aloud. They then read one age-appropriate passage aloud and a second different one silently.
They answer oral comprehension questions after each text has vanished from the screen which will identify those who can decode but don't absorb meaning from text. It will also test whether they can gather inferences from what they have read.
Lexplore’s assessment tracks the way a child’s eyes move when they read . It records how long the child’s eyes rest on one word, and how quickly the eyes move forwards and backwards across a series of words.
Here is an animation that explains the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftH-h6CceNY
Jayne Mullane, Headteacher, Mersey Vale Primary School, found the process was straightforward and fitted into the day-to-day routine of classes: 'The children read a short paragraph from a computer screen and no writing is involved, so the assessment is focused purely on reading. The great thing is that it’s fun and the content is interesting so the children really enjoyed completing the test. The screening process takes just a few minutes for each pupil.'
What Lexplore analyses
- Fixations – where their eyes stop on certain words
- Comprehension
- Decoding
- Phonological awareness
- Letter knowledge
- Saccades –how eyes skim and scan forwards and backwards over text
- Reading speed
- Fluency
Advantages over traditional reading tests
Often reading assessments tell us how well – or how badly - a child reads but it does not say why. Lexplore assessments can highlight specific problems such as reading speed, difficulty with sounds or lack of confidence in reading aloud.
One pupil found it difficult to focus on the words with both eyes which indicated that he might need glasses to correct his vision. The school asked the parents to arrange a sight test.
Aimee Cave, SENCo and assistant head at Pocklington Junior School, had a pupil who read aloud quite confidently, but was struggling with comprehension. 'We realised she may have been using a masking strategy, perhaps using visual cues to help explain what was happening in a story,' she said. 'We would not have picked up on that with standard reading tests. It’s like we can see what is in their heads.'
The assessments investigated silent reading as well as reading aloud. Sometimes there are discrepancies. One school reported: 'We found that those who read faster out loud than in their head were children who do not read at home, and often come from low income backgrounds. Knowing this has given us an opportunity to work directly with those families and encourage more reading at home.'
The assessments get below the surface of problems. One girl continually chose books that were below her reading age. However, the results from the Lexplore screening showed that in fact her reading ability was above average. Once this was established, her parents and teachers encouraged the child to choose books that she would enjoy, but would also match her reading abilities, which helped to prevent her from just coasting.
A real time saver
Adam Luxford, ICT lead, Freemantle Church of England Community Academy in Southampton, said: 'Previously, it took teachers an entire term to do accurate assessments on their whole class, with most of this time being used to write up findings to a similar level of detail. This meant we ran the risk of not identifying a child that needed support until later in the term, missing valuable intervention time.
Nowadays the school can assess 200 children via the Lexplore assessment process in a week and has a profile of each child's reading activity and attainment level within five minutes of finishing the assessment.
The software produces instant results both pictorially, and in plain English with numerical scores. This means that teachers have a clear picture of children's reading and what they need to focus on but also means it is easy to share with governors and parents without having to spend lots of time explaining what the findings mean.
When it comes to the end of the year and staff are filling out their reports, staff often work from home. Since Lexplore recordings and results sit in the cloud, teachers can log on at home, listen to the past three recordings of a pupil reading and see how that child has progressed over the year.
Providing objective evidence to support teacher's' instincts
Ludworth Primary School in Marple Bridge, Stockport wanted to find a simple yet effective way to monitor the impact of the literacy interventions being introduced to boost children’s reading skills.
Children progress at different rates and what works for one child may be totally ineffectual for another. They needed to do a 'before and after' to see what worked for the individual but it had to be quick and accurate and not lead to a ream of paperwork.
Nicola Hankey, a teacher and the SEND co-ordinator at the school, explains. 'Using an online tool such as Lexplore enables us to get a benchmark of a child’s reading ability in just a few minutes. We’ve found there is far less anxiety than there can be with a pen and paper test, particularly for pupils with additional needs. The assessment is computer based, quick to implement and there’s no wait for the results.'
'We might have a child who finds reading words with groups of sounds such as ‘ai’ or ‘ou’ challenging,' said Nicola. 'Knowing this means we can set time aside each day to work through lists of words containing these sounds with the child. This repetition helps the sounds to become more familiar and as a result, their reading flows much more naturally and their confidence soars. Teachers can use Lexplore to clarify and add measurable data to their own professional judgements and gain further insight into the nature of issues individuals are experiencing.'
Are you a researcher?
Lexplore is used in many countries with many languages but has only been in UK schools since 2018. The software was developed as a product of The Kronoberg Project, a longitudinal study of reading and writing difficulties, began almost 30 years ago. The project took hundreds of students with and without specific reading difficulties and tested them from third grade to adulthood for reading and educational attainment.
Along the way the study collected thousands of eye movement recordings and the artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to learn from new data. The more schools that use Lexplore, the bigger the body of evidence and the more accurate the results are.
The company still has an active research arm and has a list of proposals for ongoing research saying: 'If you are interested in a research project, joint grant application, or pursuing a master’s or PhD thesis, you are most welcome to reach out to us for a discussion of what we can do together.'
For more information, visit https://www.lexplore.com/gb