FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions About Lexercise
Concerned about your struggling reader? Wondering if Lexercise is effective? Absolutely!
Lexercise offers a comprehensive program consisting of weekly lessons and engaging practice games designed to enhance
reading skills. We’re confident in our ability to help your child succeed. Schedule a free consultation with a Lexercise reading
specialist today to get started or browse our frequently asked questions below.
General Questions About Lexercise and Learning Differences
What is Lexercise?
Lexercise is an online dyslexia intervention program, founded in 2008. Lexercise is an English-language platform that provides you and your child with lessons, practice games, activities, and a network of specialized therapists. These resources are guaranteed to help your child improve their literacy skills.
Who can use Lexercise?
Lexercise is used throughout the English-speaking world. It is an American English platform, but our therapists are able to adjust for other English dialects (for example, British English).
Does my child need a dyslexia diagnosis to benefit from Lexercise?
No, any student who is struggling with developing reading skills can benefit from the science-backed Lexercise approach that includes customized lessons, interactive games, engaging activities, and the support of an expert therapist to help your child master reading and spelling.
What is dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a difficulty with reading, writing, and spelling. It is a specific learning disability caused by differences in brain organization. People with dyslexia often struggle with recognizing and decoding words accurately and fluently. They might also have difficulty with spelling. These issues arise because of a challenge with the phonological component of language, which means these people find it hard to distinguish between different speech sounds. Importantly, dyslexia is not linked to intelligence or poor teaching. Individuals with dyslexia can have average or above-average intelligence. The challenges they face are unexpected given their other cognitive abilities and the quality of education they receive. Dyslexia can also impact reading comprehension and reduce the amount of reading experience, which can affect vocabulary and background knowledge development.
If you suspect your child may have dyslexia or is having difficulties with reading, we recommend you start by taking our free dyslexia screener or schedule a consultation with one of our expert therapists.
How common is dyslexia?
Dyslexia affects about 20% of people globally and around 11 million children in the United States. Since it affects 1 in 5 children, it’s quite common and often goes undiagnosed.
What causes dyslexia?
Dyslexia is almost always linked to genetics, so it tends to run in families. If a parent has dyslexia, their child has a high chance of also having it. Specific genes have been identified that may contribute to dyslexia, although it’s likely a combination of genes is involved.
Scientific studies have shown that people with dyslexia have differences in brain structure and brain activity, particularly in areas associated with language processing. These differences often can affect how these people’s brains process sounds and connect those sounds to letters and vice versa.
What are the effects of dyslexia?
Dyslexia’s effects extend beyond just reading and writing difficulties, and can impact many areas of life. Of course, the specific challenges vary from person to person, but here are some common effects:
Academic:
- Reading: Difficulty with accurate and fluent word reading, decoding (sounding out words), and reading comprehension.
- Writing: Struggles with spelling, writing legibly, and organizing written thoughts.
- Language: Difficulties with phonological awareness (recognizing and manipulating sounds), verbal memory, and verbal processing speed. This can affect spoken language as well, such as expressing oneself clearly or understanding what others say.
- Learning: Because reading and writing are fundamental to most subjects, dyslexia can affect learning across the board, making it harder to keep up with peers.
Social and Emotional:
- Self-esteem: Repeated struggles with reading and writing can lead to feelings of frustration, inadequacy, and low self-esteem.
- Socialization: Difficulty with communication can impact social interactions and relationships.
- Anxiety and stress: Academic challenges and social pressures can lead to anxiety and stress.
- Behavioral issues: Frustration and difficulty expressing oneself can sometimes manifest as behavioral problems.
Other Potential Effects:
- Organization and time management: Some individuals with dyslexia may have difficulty with planning, organization, and time management.
- Memory: Dyslexia can affect short-term memory and working memory, making it harder to remember information and follow instructions.
- Motor skills: Some individuals with dyslexia may also have difficulties with fine motor skills, coordination, and spatial awareness.
Given these effects of dyslexia and the fact it can be remediated, time is of the essence. Dyslexia should be treated by a professional as soon as it is suspected.
How does dyslexia relate to intelligence?
Dyslexia is not caused by low intelligence, and many dyslexic people are very smart and creative. Dyslexia is a specific learning difference related to how the brain processes language, and is unrelated to intelligence.
How are laziness and dyslexia related?
There is no connection between a child being lazy and their having dyslexia.
Often teachers and parents think a smart child who struggles with reading, writing, and/or spelling is just not trying hard enough. However for a child with dyslexia, this cannot be further from the truth! Given the difference in how these children’s brains process language, they are often trying much harder than their non-dyslexic peers even though they are having little reading/writing success. These students need intervention that meets their brains’ specific needs, so that they can achieve academic success.
What is dysgraphia?
Lexercise therapists are highly skilled at working with students with dysgraphia. Dysgraphia is a brain based condition that causes disabled handwriting. Parents and teachers often notice it in a student’s struggles with writing and spelling. Dysgraphia is often overlooked or attributed to laziness, lack of motivation, carelessness, or delayed visual and motor processing (Berninger and Wolf, 2009). Dysgraphia symptoms and signs, some of which may surprise you, are shared in this article What Is Dysgraphia?, and you can learn more about the difference between dyslexia and dysgraphia here: Dyslexia and Dysgraphia: Same or Different?
If you suspect your child may have dysgraphia or is having difficulties with writing, we recommend you start by taking our free dysgraphia test or schedule a consultation with one of our expert therapists. Or if you want to submit a sample of your child’s handwriting for assessment consider doing our Reading and Spelling Inventory.
Is Lexercise suitable for ESL students?
If English is your child’s second language, they can still benefit from our program – they just need to have had a minimum of 6 months of English language instruction. Structured literacy (the Lexercise Structured Literacy Curriculum™) is good for English Language Learners (ELL) and emergent bilingual (EB) students. We encourage you to schedule a free consultation with a therapist to learn how our service can be personalized for your needs.
What is the age range to use Lexercise?
The Lexercise Structured Literacy Curriculum™ is not sequenced based on grade level but is sequenced based on the structure of the English language. People of a wide range of ages from children to adults have successfully engaged in our therapy.
- Children: Children from 5 years old and up succeed with our program. The average 1st grader is able to fully engage with Lexercise online therapy, and we recommend that a student have at least 6 months of reading instruction before starting therapy. (However, we do have an 8-week emergent literacy program only available in Professional Therapy, which helps younger and/or more-impaired students develop literacy prerequisites. It includes: 1) awareness that print carries meaning, 2) awareness of the difference between numbers and letters, 3) the ability to engage in oral conversation and turn-taking, and 4) the ability to respond to spoken questions and directions.)
- Adolescents & Adults: Adolescents and adults do very well with Lexercise. In other programs these students would start at level 1, but we customize intervention and each student’s starting point. Our weekly sessions and daily practice are personalized by the therapist, making our service a great option for older students.
Head over to our Lexercise Stories page to learn more about how our program has successfully helped readers from ages 4 to 63.
Can I use Lexercise as an Educator?
If you are a teacher or school staff member looking for an effective Orton-Gillingham (structured literacy) solution to bring to your school, look no further than Lexercise for SchoolsTM. We developed Lexercise for SchoolsTM because we believe that every teacher and student should have access to an effective structured literacy program. Expensive and time-consuming teacher training is often not feasible for schools. We provide teachers with pre-recorded Orton-Gillingham lessons from the same powerful structured literacy curriculum used by our dyslexia therapists around the country. Students enrolled in our Lexercise for SchoolsTM program have access to the same practice platform as students in our individual therapy subscriptions, and as with our other subscription services, each account is supported by a skilled Lexercise literacy specialist.
Educators can also engage in the Lexercise professional education course sequence, which provides a logical, sequential, and solid foundation for structured literacy professional development. Our professional education courses are for anyone who is looking to build their knowledge and become an expert in structured literacy. Our courses provide in-depth instruction starting with the structure of written English, moving into multisensory, structured literacy intervention, and then applying this knowledge with real students in our supervised practicum. After completing our courses, you will have the science-backed knowledge and skills to help struggling readers gain confidence and become proficient readers and spellers.
How can I get started with Lexercise?
We offer free online learning disability and dyslexia tests to help you learn more about your child’s strengths and weaknesses.
All Lexercise intervention services are guided by our comprehensive structured literacy curriculum, which is proven to help children with dyslexia and other learning disabilities to read, write, and spell with confidence. With Lexercise’s online dyslexia Professional Therapy services, our certified Orton-Gillingham therapists offer one-on-one lessons from the comfort of your own home. We know our program works and guarantee results. Meanwhile, our Basic Therapy option gives you all the necessary tools to guide and support your reader as they master their literacy skills.
If you have a struggling reader, writer, or speller, we suggest you get started with one of our free learning disability tests. Over 300,000 families have trusted Lexercise to identify and treat dyslexia and other learning disabilities. If you’d like to read what other families using Lexercise think of our program, you can read their stories and Lexercise reviews on our website.
Our Curriculum and Program
What is structured literacy?
Structured literacy is a way of teaching reading and writing that is based on the science of reading, which is a body of research that has identified the essential skills and knowledge that children need to learn to read and write. Structured literacy methods include all the components of literacy, from speech to text: speech sounds (phonemic awareness), phonics, spelling (orthography), meaningful word parts (morphology), vocabulary, sentence structure (syntax), and discourse comprehension. Instructional features include explicit and systematic instruction with attention to prerequisite skills, prompt and targeted error correction, carefully structured examples, initial use of synthetic phonics for associating speech sounds with their letter symbols, increasing complexity with cumulative review, and data-based decision-making.
Structured literacy is an umbrella term that covers literacy-intervention approaches like Orton-Gillingham (O-G) and others which are based on the science of reading. Structured literacy therapy is the gold standard for treating dyslexia and other literacy challenges. At Lexercise, we’ve built an online platform based on research-backed principles and the latest research in the science of reading that helps your family get this critical help from your home and on your schedule. Through our online dyslexia programs, we provide customized lessons, interactive games, and engaging activities to help your child master reading and spelling.
What makes Lexercise therapy unique?
Lexercise offers a unique approach to literacy therapy by combining weekly online lessons with daily interactive practice games, which provide personalized instruction and significantly more practice than traditional methods. This online platform allows for continuous updates to the curriculum, ensuring students benefit from the latest advancements in reading science.
The Lexercise Structured Literacy CurriculumTM provides easy-to-follow lessons, interactive games, and engaging activities to help students master reading and spelling. The curriculum uses a speech to print approach with stations and procedures that have been carefully designed to offer instruction at the pace the student needs to fully address the domains of literacy development. Students achieve gains in reading, writing, spelling, reading comprehension, and sentence formation. This gives the student tools to develop their literacy skills so that they grow in confidence.
Old Way
In traditional Orton-Gillingham therapy and in most other programs, the tutor or therapist sees the student multiple times per week. During a session they teach the student new material (direct instruction) and also do practice activities with the student. The practice done in the sessions is generally all the practice the student gets.
Lexercise Way
In contrast, Lexercise splits the direct instruction and practice. You and your student will have a lesson once per week, and then the other days of the week, your child will reinforce what they learned in the lesson by doing their online, independent games practice. Also, you can do some parent-led activities with your child to further support them. Lexercise clients get significantly more practice than if they were doing a twice-a-week traditional O-G session. They will receive over 400 of what we call “response challenges” per week! For this reason, the Lexercise platform is providing your child with much more practice than would be humanly possible in the traditional therapy model.
The curriculum’s customizable lesson objectives, along with the daily deliberate practice that ties back to the lessons and tracks your child’s mastery, are designed to equip your student to move from struggling reader to word expert!
Further, the Lexercise platform is fully online, so we are able to adapt and improve our curriculum and lessons at any time to stay up-to-date with developments in the science of reading. Since we don’t have to update printed materials to include the latest consensus research, our students benefit from lesson materials that don’t go out of date.
What is Lexercise Professional Therapy?
Lexercise Professional Therapy gives you the best in structured literacy (Orton-Gilllingham) intervention: an expert therapist, a research-backed curriculum, and personalized daily practice. It is sold in 4-session sets, with each session including these two components:
- A One-on-One Live Instruction Lesson: Each week your dedicated therapist works with you and your child in one 45-minute, one-on-one, interactive online therapy lesson to illustrate, explain, and make memorable the appropriate set of concepts at your child’s level.
- Daily Practice: The other days of the week your child completes practice to review and master what was taught in the one-on-one lesson. Your therapist adjusts practice for your child’s needs and your schedule. Practice is of two types:
- Online practice games your child completes independently through their Lexercise dashboard, and
- Review and other tabletop activities for you to do with your child as your schedule allows.
What is Lexercise Basic Therapy?
Basic Therapy provides you and your child with access to structured literacy (Orton-Gillingham) intervention at an affordable price. Each lesson generally lasts a week and has two components:
- Weekly, Pre-recorded Lessons: Each week you will watch an 8-minute parent training video and then deliver a 30-minute, interactive online therapy lesson to your child. The video and lesson materials are delivered by our founder and leading literacy expert, Sandie Barrie Blackley, and can be navigated at a pace you set. The lesson prompts your child for a response every 20 seconds so that they practice and quickly learn the new material.
- Daily practice: The other days of the week your child completes practice to review and master what was taught in the lesson. Practice is of two types:
- Online practice games your child completes independently (~15 minutes) at least 4 days for each lesson, and
- Parent-assisted review and practice activities for you to do with your child each day as your schedule allows (~15 minutes).
How long will it take us to get through a Basic Therapy lesson?
Lessons are designed to be completed in one week.
For example, Monday you and your child might work through the 30-minute lesson, and then the rest of the week your child would complete their online games each day, and you would support your child with parent-assisted activities as you have time. This way your child can master the material and move on to the next lesson. The following week you move your child to the next lesson and repeat the process with the new information.
What is the difference between Basic Therapy and Professional Therapy?
Basic Therapy and Professional Therapy both use the same Lexercise Structured Literacy CurriculumTM (Orton-Gillingham) that is proven to help with reading, writing, and spelling problems. They both include weekly lessons, shared tabletop activities, and online practice games. In Professional Therapy there is greater customization of the lessons, games, and activities by your dedicated therapist.
The main difference between Professional Therapy and Basic Therapy is price, customization, and time.
Why does Professional Therapy cost more than Basic Therapy?
Professional Therapy costs more than Basic Therapy because you are getting the focused support and expertise of a professional literacy therapist. Your therapist not only meets with you for a live one-on-one customized lesson each week, but they also personalize and monitor your daily practice and serve as your ongoing expert resource. Unlike many tutors, our therapists are qualified clinical professionals, and you are paying for their expertise, time, and personalized support of you and your child. Having the support of a therapist allows your child to make very fast progress with most children being remediated in a matter of months. If this option fits in your budget, this is the recommended route.
Basic Therapy gives you access to the same structured literacy curriculum and online games, but with Basic Therapy, the parent delivers the lesson to the child using lessons recorded by our co-founder, Sandie Barrie-Blackley. Basic Therapy is self paced and asynchronous and grants access to our research-backed curriculum in a more affordable way. You still have access to your dedicated therapist through online chat to answer your questions and get some customization of your child’s therapy, but your therapist does not deliver the lesson to your child each week.
How does the Lexercise Professional Therapy guarantee work?
We stand by our service because Lexercise gets results! Our data show that about 97% of children and parents, who fully engage in Professional Therapy by participating in the weekly sessions and completing their daily practice, make at least a grade level of reading improvement in 8 weeks. If you and your student fully engage in therapy, but your child doesn’t make that level of improvement, Lexercise will pay for your third month of therapy.
Your therapist will establish your child’s baseline reading level during the first session. This is done by using the San Diego Quick Assessment along with grade-leveled tasks and reading passages. In your child’s 8th session, your therapist will re-assess your child’s reading level on the same assessment protocol.
If the child hasn’t made the gains in spite of you and the child doing your part in those first eight sessions, your third month of therapy is free! Lexercise pays for it, not your therapist. This keeps incentives aligned for therapists to do an accurate job of assessing your child’s progress.
Of course, for your child to make this level of progress, you have to show up to sessions and ensure your child does their regular practice. For more specifics head over to our Guarantee page.
Can I switch between Basic Therapy and Professional Therapy?
Yes you can. Since both services use the same curriculum, switching between the two is easy, and the system will track your progress, allowing you to pick up where you left off.
How long does the program take to complete?
The Lexercise Structured Literacy CurriculumTM has 44 to 52 lessons, each of which is designed to take one week to complete. Where your student is placed in the curriculum depends on their specific needs. Some students may need to take longer on a particular lesson, and some parents of younger students may decide not to have their child complete the higher levels of the curriculum. Therefore, the time it takes to complete the program will depend on the student, their pace of learning, their curriculum placement, and the goals for the student.
How are Professional Therapy sessions scheduled?
Lexercise will match your child with a therapist who best matches your child in terms of their needs and your availability for the weekly session. There are Lexercise therapists in all North American time zones (as well as some outside North America), so scheduling your weekly session at a time that works for you and your child is usually easy.
How does the daily practice work?
Practice consists of two parts:
- Your child’s independent practice usually lasts about 15 minutes a day and might consist of games, brief instructional slides, and reading & letter formation activities. We recommend a minimum of 4 days of practice after each session, but your child can practice every day!
- Parent-led practice is assigned by the therapist when in Professional Therapy and by our system when in Basic Therapy. It is accessed through your parent portal and consists of shared activities that allow you to work with your child as your schedule permits. These activities consist of printables, table top activities, and on-screen practice exercises that reinforce the concepts of your child’s current lesson.
Doing practice this way, we can let the computer do what it’s good at (rapid responses), while you provide additional support with more tabletop and conversational activities (relationship and social interactivity).
An interesting fact is that in an average online session a Lexercise therapist will get about 80 responses from your child. This is excellent. But compare this to the fact that in 10-15 minutes of playing our online practice games, your child will be prompted to give 60 or more responses! This is very meaningful practice.
Every day when you and your child complete the assigned practice, all of that practice data is recorded and shared with your therapist so they can monitor and assess your child’s progress. That data is also visible to you on your parent portal.
I heard the Lexercise games are wonderful – can I just have my child use the Lexercise online games?
The Lexercise practice platform is tied to our Lexercise Structured Literacy CurriculumTM and the lessons it consists of. Each challenge a student encounters in their daily practice is specifically designed to give them the practice and review they need to master the concepts taught in the lesson. The Lexercise online practice is only available as part of an online therapy subscription.
If you are curious about our online practice games, you can try them at this link.
Our Expert Therapists
What are the qualifications of Lexercise therapists?
Our dyslexia therapists are world-class experts in the science of reading. All of the therapists working with students on the Lexercise platform have been qualified and have had a supervised practicum in structured literacy. Although they may have been trained through different programs and may hold different certifications, they are all highly qualified and trained. Our therapists are passionate about literacy and possess the skills to use evidence-based tools to customize intervention to equip children with the skills they need to become word experts. You can learn more about our therapists and their qualifications here and schedule a free 15-minute consultation to discuss your child’s literacy development at this link.
Are Lexercise literacy therapists “Orton-Gillingham certified”?
Lexercise therapists are experts in structured literacy (Orton-Gillingham). All therapists working with students on the Lexercise platform have gone through a rigorous qualification and training process and are knowledgeable about the structure of the English language and multisensory, structured literacy intervention. Although you’ll see that our therapists have a variety of professional certifications, they have all completed a supervised practicum in structured literacy that allows them to apply their expertise to customizing your student’s intervention.
Utilizing the Lexercise structured literacy program, our therapists have been serving families around the English-speaking world since 2008. If you are looking for an Orton-Gillingham solution for your child, schedule a free consultation with one of our expert therapists to learn more about our program and how we can help your struggling reader.
Will my student work with one therapist consistently, or will we rotate between therapists from week to week?
Typically, a student will work with the same therapist for the duration of their therapy. (This is true for Professional and Basic Therapy services.) In the event that a change in scheduling results in the need for a change in therapist, our team of specialists is available to support families as needed to allow your student to continue their forward progress.
How do you know how to personalize my child’s therapy?
Getting Started
In your very first Professional Therapy lesson, your therapist will perform a language-processing assessment on your child. This set of assessments is designed to identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses so that therapy can be personalized to their needs. It allows your therapist to place your child at the appropriate place in the curriculum. So for example, if your child needs to start at Level 5, she will skip Levels 1-4.
Similarly in Basic Therapy, during your first week you will give your child a spelling test that will allow your therapist to place your child in the structured literacy curriculum.
Personalization Throughout Your Therapy
Your therapist is regularly monitoring and customizing your child’s lessons and practice. So for example, if your child is strong in vocabulary but weak in phonological awareness, your therapist might decrease the time and activities each week for vocabulary practice and increase that of letter-sound practice. Your therapist can see your child’s practice accuracy and fluency data and can customize the lesson and practice to truly meet your child’s personal needs.
Common Billing Questions
Is this a subscription service?
Yes, Lexercise Therapy is a subscription service intended to give families access to four weekly sessions using our structured literacy curriculum and daily intensive practice. The subscription service is prepaid four weeks at a time and automatically bills for the next set of four sessions. You can cancel your subscription at any time through the Lexercise Parent Portal.
Can I pay for Lexercise therapy with an Education Savings Account (ESA) or a medical savings account like an HSA or a Flex account?
Yes to both!
Lexercise has therapy groups who are approved providers for numerous state ESA and scholarship programs already! Please visit this page Student Financial Aid for Reading Programs where you can learn more and can request to speak to one of our therapists to learn whether your state funding can be used for Lexercise therapy for your child.
In regard to medical savings accounts, you can use your HSA, MSA, or FLEX card to pay for services.
For any tax-related questions, we recommend you refer to this document IRS Publication 502, Medical and Dental Expenses (PDF).
Is this service covered by medical insurance?
It is our experience that educational evaluations and interventions are not covered by medical insurance plans because there are no ICD codes for these services. (ICD codes are medical codes required by insurance companies to reimburse medical expenses.) However, families do use funds from their Health Savings Account (HSA), Medical Savings Account (MSA), or a FLEX Account to pay for Lexercise services.
Is the cost of Lexercise therapy tax deductible?
Potentially, yes. The IRS definition of a qualified medical expense is quite broad and includes therapy for “learning disabilities” (i.e., dyslexia). This means that the cost of Lexercise therapy, which provides specialized dyslexia tutoring, might be eligible for a tax deduction. See page 13 of this IRS publication (PDF) for more details. We suggest that customers consult their accountant or tax preparer to determine if they qualify for this deduction. If it appears you will qualify, note that a physician’s recommendation is required.
How can I get a doctor’s recommendation for Lexercise?
Most people do not need a doctor’s recommendation to use Lexercise. However, if you do need it for tax purposes for example, read on.
In recent years, pediatricians have become more aware of how common dyslexia is among children (1 in 5 children have dyslexia) and of the poor health outcomes and difficulties that may be experienced by patients with dyslexia or other disorders related to their literacy development. Left too long or undiagnosed, these challenges can impact students’ mental health, leading to anxiety or depression.
Since this is a major factor in your child’s overall wellness, you can approach your pediatrician armed with your student’s risk assessment from our free dyslexia screener and a printout with the link to this article Speaking to Your Pediatrician About Dyslexia to enlist their help and to request a prescription or letter recommending Lexercise therapy for your child. That article contains links to scholarly articles published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, such as Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, and Vision and Reintroducing Dyslexia: Early Identification and Implications for Pediatric Practice.