Building your Library within LightHouse Reader is one of the most exciting aspects of the platform. When you first purchase LightHouse Reader, you receive twenty free books to begin your library. Next, just like your bookshelves at home, you begin curating individual titles and bundles of books perfectly suited for your homeschooling needs from tens of thousands of available books. A parent can also add funds to a child’s online wallet, allowing them to make book purchases, or a child can send a request to their parent for a particular book they would like to read.

The first time your child logs on into LightHouse Reader, they take a survey about their reading interests. Based on this survey, LightHouse Reader prioritizes the genres and topics your child will see first. Your child’s library will suggest books that are popular on the platform and relevant to your child’s interests or related to other books they have read. A child can “check out” up to ten books at a time, which will be displayed in their Continue Reading section. Students can curate their own virtual bookshelf to read in the future with the My List feature. A child’s library is dynamic, easily navigated, and customized to each individual, guiding your child to the perfect books for their interests and reading level. You can sort libraries by genre, fiction or nonfiction, and Power Texts (books within 200 points +/- of a child’s Lexile® reading score). Each child's Library will look different because it will be personalized to them. And in multiple places throughout the platform, such as when opening and closing a book, related content will be suggested, encouraging your child to continue exploring topics and reading further.

In addition to the opportunity to curate a personal library by purchasing books from the e-bookstore; parents also have access to a shared complimentary library that includes educational articles on current events, social issues, science, nature and much more.

LightHouse Reader provides an easy and simple format for viewing all parts of speech words in a text. Turning on the feature will show an easy to read menu with all parts of speech words in the viewed text.

Each parts of speech section is color-coded and highlighted in the text so the child can match the word in the text.

Writing Skill Builder allows parents to quickly and easily build assignments which help children improve their writing skills and is evaluated by LightHouse Reader.

Writing Skill Builder assignments teach a multitude of skills on topics such as sentence structure, word usage, capitalization, parts of speech, prefixes, and even reasoning skills - all tailored to the grade level the parent has selected.

Based on the grade a parent selects, a list of possible questions is offered, and a parent can sort this list by skill type, selecting the perfect questions for their child. For example, a parent may decide to focus on capitalization and punctuation questions, or sentence structure and word usage.

There are many different styles of questions a child can be offered as well, such as multiple choice, multi-select (more than one possible answer), drag-and-drop, and fill-in-the-blank, all of which will be automatically graded by LightHouse Reader.

As a child works through the assessment, several child-friendly features help guide them. A child is able to choose a voice and adjust the font type and size for their preference. Their instructions appear in the sidebar throughout the assessment so that they are always close at hand. They are given two chances to answer each question correctly, and can always view an explanation of why an answer is the right one. And an on-screen roll shows them their progress as they work their way through the assignment. Book Reports are funda­mental in helping your child build their writing skills and learn summary and analysis. Book Report allows parents to easily assign books from their library for their child to write a report on.

A child’s data on a Writing Skill Builder assignment is included on the Totals tab of both the parent and child dashboards. Their progress and outcomes on these assignments is always provided to the child as a tool to help them understand where they are and chart where they would like to be. In addition to receiving their data, children also earn fun motivational badges for completing all assignments, including Writing Skill Builder assessments.

<з>Book Reports are funda­mental in helping your child build their writing skills and learn summary and analysis. Book Report allows parents to easily assign books from their library for their child to write a report on. <з>The parent chooses a template for the report which the child will then complete and integrate into their report. The parent will then review by commenting and grading using a writing rubric. The child will receive a rubric grade and feedback specific to the criteria for success. <з>Both the parent and child can easily view the final grade including a targeted feedback in the results section.

Informal Writing Workshops are more of a fun game than an assessment, but that doesn’t mean they don’t provide tremendous value as a writing tool.

These non-gradable assignments can either be assigned by a parent or a child can choose to complete them when they’d like. And that is how the workshops were designed - as real-life writing encounters that children will actually want to engage in.

Informal Writing Workshops provide grade-appropriate scenarios for children to experience writing in an organic and relatable way, through mock social media posts, fun and creative free writing prompts, and even hashtag challenges. Kids know that you don’t write essays in the real world every day, but asking them to compose a thoughtful Tweet® on a current event or comment on a friend’s social media post makes the need for writing real.

While these assignments are not graded, to encourage fun and active participation, a parent can like or comment on a child’s responses to provide encouragement and feedback.

My Journal is a space especially for your child’s personal notes and thoughts. It can be both a reading journal, integrated with their library, and/or a regular diary.

As a reading journal, My Journal gives your child the ability to record their thoughts, questions, and favorite quotes directly from the books they are reading. From any book, they can access their Journal and see all their entries. From there, they can create a new entry, edit previous ones, select text from the book to quote, and include citations with the click of a button.

But their My Journal entries do not have to be associated with their reading. Children can create entries about anything from how their day went, to what they did on vacation, to their personal thoughts and dreams.

With technology constantly changing, the need for parental control is more necessary than ever before. As parents, we want our children to reap the benefits of modern technology while staying protected. LightHouse Reader provides a parent full control and oversight on all of its features.

• A parent can:
• • View all book chats, turn off chats, remove a child from a chat
• • Limit chat to Book Clubs and Clubhouse
• • Turn off social media sharing
• • Hide books from your child’s library
• • And much more…

Introducing LightHouse Clubhouse. A Clubhouse is a child’s domain, and the child is the king or queen of their own literacy kingdom.

How does this work?

A parent creates a Clubhouse and the child invites their trusted friends with parental approval. Then, the children get to chat about any book or topic in a fun, safe, parentally supervised virtual Clubhouse.

• • Goals are set by the parent and can be daily, weekly, or monthly. The parent can add gifting with personal messaging. Gifting allows a parent to attach a gift based on goal completion.
• • Milestones are set by the child and are incremental. The child is encouraged to set miletones for minutes and books read.

Everyone loves tournaments, whether you are a March Madness fan, soccer fan, or video gamer. Tournaments are fun! As a parent, you can create your own reading tournament and invite your friends to join by giving them a special code.

As a child, you can actively search for existing and ongoing tournaments and request permission to join. Tournament metrics include reading minutes, number of books read and many more. The tournament creator gets to choose prizes and badges for winners. Both parents and children will view the tournament leaderboard including ranking and totals.

LightHouse Reader’s Word Work feature does precisely what it implies: it helps your child work on vocabulary and spelling words they have missed in the course of their assignments.

Word Work is designed to prompt your child in multiple ways to review and practice problem areas. When your child exits out of or completes a book, they are prompted to retake any missed reading Clozes (fill-in-the-blanks). At the end of a Spelling Bee, they are offered the opportunity to retake incorrectly spelled words. Through book overlays, the History tab, and the Word Work tab. A child can also see which assignments require further study as they access the History and Word Work tabs.

With Word Work, you don’t have to worry that your child is senselessly practicing information they have already mastered. It is a tool that gives your child focused practice and additional targeted support specifically to areas they need to work on.