Using LightSail’s Power Challenge in Your Homeschool

As homeschool parents, we want our children to read books at the just-right level to foster a love for reading and learning. Books that don’t challenge or excite them can dampen their passion for reading, as can texts written above their reading ability. Fortunately, when your child takes a Power Challenge, it enables LightSail to custom-tailor their learning experience and offer those just-right books to them. Upon completing the Power Challenge, your child’s library will populate with books at the perfect reading level to maximize interest and promote reading progress.

The first time your child logs on to LightSail, they begin a Power Challenge. This is a short, unintimidating reading assessment. Your child will read a passage with one missing word (designated by a blue cloze box), and has a choice of four options for filling in the box. This first question is targeted to the grade level you provided for your child. Upon selecting and submitting their best answer, they will receive another passage. Depending on your child’s responses, each subsequent question is easier or more challenging.  By the end of the Power Challenge, LightSail has determined their Lexile® score, a very precise measure of their reading ability and far more specific than a grade level.

So how does LightSail use a child’s Lexile® score to customize the platform just for them? Well, every book and article in LightSail has its own Lexile® score. This way, children can be matched with texts in their just-right zone.

1. The Lexile® Framework for Reading

• The Lexile® score is a measurement of a student’s reading ability on the Lexile® scale.
• Readers are given a Lexile® score upon completing the Power Challenge.
• Texts on the LightSail platform are also labeled with Lexile® text measurement scores.
• This allows LightSail to automatically offer books at the correct reading level and allows parents and readers to choose just-right books.

2. Benefits of a LightSail Power Challenge

• Choose the correct reading-level books to offer your child.
• Automatically provide your child with more advanced reading material as their Lexile® score grows.
• Customize books and assignments offered to your child.
• Measure, track, and project growth in reading ability.

3. Using a Power Challenge

• The Power Challenge automatically initiates when your child first logs on to LightSail (unless you disable it beforehand).
• A Power Challenge contains 32-42 questions.
• LightSail saves their progress, so your child can exit at any time and complete the Challenge later.
• The Toolbox allows your child to listen to the passage, change the font, or choose another voice option.
• A completion popup displays the student’s Lexile® score.
• A Lexile® chart shows Lexile® measurements in comparison to grade levels.
• Parents can change Power Challenge and Cloze settings in the child settings area of the parent settings.

LightSail’s Power Challenge takes the guesswork out of choosing books at the just-right reading level for your child to promote reading growth, and it is a powerful way to provide your homeschooler with content that will ignite their interest and passion for reading.