Grammar

Reading

Reading with LightSail opens the doors to 21st-century education with personalized learning for each student and adaptive technology that continually curates content for each student in their personal Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This ensures students are reading at their "just-right" level.

Each reading tool supports educational growth for students in their own way, with individualized learning options to support multi-modal learning and exponential growth in all areas of ELA.

Learn more about Team Reading in your classroom, consider Literacy Circles for small-group learning, and even import your own content to support your curriculum goals with Content Builder.

To see what students have to say about LightSail, click HERE.

To see what educators have to say about LightSail in their classrooms, click HERE.

To see what administrators have to say about LightSail’s effect on their school culture, click HERE.

Lexile-Based Adaptive e-Reader

LightSail’s Lexile®-centric Educational e-Reader is designed with visibility and engagement in mind. Our adaptive e-Reader increases the visibility and accountability of reading minutes with embedded assessment performance tracking and responses.

Students answer contextualized Clozes (fill-in-the-blanks) directly related to the content they’ve chosen to read to check for comprehension. Both correct and missed responses are tracked within the LightSail system, with options for vocabulary and comprehension remediation within our Word Work module. This enables LightSail to continually track progress and adjust their Lexile® level every 15 days.

This personalized and differentiated reading experience for each student ensures that our adaptive library continually offers all students texts across different genres and precisely within their individual Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

In addition, students can transform text instantly with options to increase text size, read aloud, and interact with the text in new ways!

LIGHTSAIL BOOKS ARE ENHANCED WITH:

• •Over 40,000 curriculum-aligned questions and activities
• •World-class educational video clips
• •Contextual action clips bringing illustrations and content to life
• •Read aloud capabilities
• •Tools to support vocabulary development
• •Option to activate Personalized Reader mode to support Struggling Readers

Visit our Library Main Page to learn more and explore our content.

Library

A Content-Rich, Multi-Modal, Customizable Digital Library for ALL Budgets!

LightSail’s Library is designed to scale to meet the needs of every reader and curriculum.

You can choose from two starter libraries which include either 5,600 or 10,000 assessed books depending on your budget.

From there, we’ll help you build a “just-right” digital library for your school, your district, and your classrooms even further.

All packages include:

• •1,600 LightSail Antares Reading™ short-form books / Leveled Readers in English and Spanish
• •3,500 Curated LightSail & Public Domain Classics
• •13,000 Audio Classics from the public domain

Included with the LS-10,000 LightSail student license are 4,500 high-interest trade fiction & nonfiction books from Rosen Publishing

There are an additional 100,000 books to purchase from the world’s leading trade and educational publishers.

Every book opened in LightSail can be transformed by the adaptive e-Reader, allowing for instant accommodations in the text & embedded content with educational video clips & embedded assessments.

Visit our Library Main Page to learn more and explore our content.

Audio Classics

With thousands of curated, human-narrated classics from the public domain, auditory and on-the-go learners can support their individual reading needs with Audio Classics. Students can reinforce school assignments by following along with the actual text, or listen to the books to enhance comprehension.

Team Reading

Ready…set…READ! Set your students off on a Reading Relay with LightSail’s Team Reading module. LightSail’s Team Reading supports all students, allowing everyone to read their own way.

Powered by the teacher, students follow along in a real-time, synchronized reading experience, taking turns reading a passage aloud ALL from the same text and then passing the baton to the next reader via the LightSail platform. With LightSail, every student’s experience is customized to their reading needs!

Teachers can easily grade oral reading fluency in real-time with a pre-design template, reward students with badges, and send them a private message through chat during the relay for encouragement.

Both strong readers and challenged readers can be a team player thanks to LightSail’s Personalized Reader module, which levels the playing field with reader-specific support for each kind of struggling reader. No computer screen will look the same - the words on the screen are the same, but how they see & experience the text can be unique to each reader, all while maintaining the synchronicity of the read aloud for the whole group, creating equity for all readers.

Choose from over 10,000 books in the LightSail platform, or even purchase the title you need from over 100,000 books in our e-Bookstore. Every book can be a Team Reading book with LightSail!

Learn More with our Team Reading Intro video!

Literacy Circles

Literacy Circles allow students to participate in their own relay teams for in-depth book study. Teachers design student groups for collaborative and supportive reading, using Lexile® scores to guide their selection.

Students follow along in a real-time, synchronized reading experience, taking turns reading a passage aloud all from the same text, then passing the baton to the next reader from within the LightSail Reader. With Personalized Reader Mode, each student is empowered to discreetly see & experience the text with their individual accommodations while maintaining the synchronicity of the read aloud for the whole group, creating equity even in small groups.

Teachers can create Literacy Circles in the traditional sense as a literature circle, or can create custom reading groups for additional support. Pair a strong reader with one or more others who need support or encouragement for fluency & prosody focus. Team up bilingual or multilingual language learners and use LightSail’s large collection of books in Spanish, enabling students to read in their native language. Create leveled groups for deep dive studies. Or create themed groups based on your curriculum goals.

Choose a specific book, let students choose their own title, or attach a Unit Study for the ultimate team exploration. Students can work through an entire topic together for a multi-genre, cross-curricular literacy exploration.

Content Builder

Teachers, administrators, and curriculum leaders can import and curate content in any language from websites, Google Docs, PDFs, and ePubs.

LightSail’s Content Builder module allows teachers, administrators, & curriculum leaders to import cross-curricular content from any website or Word document in any language. Next, educators can customize the imported text by adding standards-aligned questions and "Thoughts" with annotations, and even removing unwanted ads and content from websites. Educators can either assign the imported text directly to students or to the school library for students to read at their leisure.

Writing Solutions

LightSail’s Writing Solutions offers a suite of creative options for both students and teachers to use their writing skills in intentional and realistic composition, preparing students for higher education and their futures as contributing, literate citizens. We know that students process information deeply if they use critical thinking skills to not only discuss the information they’ve read, but also utilize that new knowledge by applying it to real-world situations.

Students engage in a comprehensive digital writing experience that supports planning, drafting, receiving feedback, and revising and editing.

Write an essay with multimedia enhancements, practice your hand at blogging, write a TED talk on a specific idea, draft letters to the editor or to a friend, draft a personal narrative for your college application, or even author and publish your own book. The possibilities are endless with Writing Solutions!

Writing Solutions - Essay

The word "essay" makes many students grumble because they don’t know where or how to start - enter LightSail to guide them step by step through the writing process.

LightSail’s Essay Module promotes recursive writing as a best practice. It provides students the support and confidence to plan, draft, reflect on feedback, and revise/edit with the support of their teacher. These feedback cycles grow strong writers and a classroom culture of academic success.

LightSail’s Essay module also supports a teacher’s design of student friendly pre-planning and draft templates that provide tips and structure to grow an essay through multiple feedback cycles. Teachers can use a template or custom rubric to provide targeted and specific feedback to each writer.

Help your students transition to post-secondary education by exposing them to advanced writing skills such as MLA/APA citations and paraphrasing and learning through focused feedback.

Writing Solutions - Authentic Writing

The Authentic Writing module opens the door to imagination and creativity while tapping into student’s analytical and critical thinking skills based on the content they’ve been reading at their “just-right” level.

While reading, students complete short-response questions when requested by their teachers based on their reading to actively check comprehension in real-time. Once they finish a book, teachers can assign an Authentic Writing Activity based on the comprehensive content to tap into higher-order thinking.

Teachers can select a book from the student’s portfolio to assign one of several authentic writing opportunities - a TED talk, Blog, Friendly Letter, Formal Letter, PSA, or Personal Narrative. Teachers can assign a due date and track progress through the platform.

Students can engage in a digital writing experience with the opportunity to demonstrate reading comprehension through 21st-century, real-world, diversified writing prompts.

Writing Solutions - Student-Authored Books

Students can publish their very own books right in the LightSail platform!

Using the module to guide the process, students can compose and create a multimedia reading experience with LightSail’s unique tools. Insert images, embed videos, be creative with font and style, and even include an author bio. We reinforce vocabulary witha built-in glossary at the end. Proper crediting and citations of sources are reinforced with our source options that appear at the end of their books. Students can save drafts and work on their writing later, submit for peer review, and/or have their teacher review it before being approved by the teacher to publish.

Students in their class, grade, school, district, or across the LightSail Universe can read their books in the LightSail library subject to Teacher approval.

Imagine the confidence your students will have seeing their book alongside other published authors right here in the LightSail Library!

Writing Solutions - Teacher-Authored Books

Teachers can create their own books to deliver important content to students in an e-book/multimedia format, or can create books through Word Journeys to reinforce target vocabulary in a more accessible, contextual way for students.

You can even create your own books specifically for students who need laser-focus practice with specific words.

Create your own content or cut and paste from your curriculum, adding videos and images and identifying targeted words.

This is a great way to reinforce mastery of words for struggling readers or for students who need more practice with the vocabulary and concepts you’re teaching. And reading a book is way more fun than flashcards and vocabulary lists!

Struggling Reader Tools

Students who struggle due to ADHD, dyslexia, autism, visual impairments, or other challenges can find reading success with LightSail’s tools built specifically for struggling readers.

Students who struggle to read don’t fit into a standard reading program. For them, even looking at the first few words on a page can induce anxiety. LightSail’s Personalized Reader and accessibility features support your struggling readers with unique tools designed to meet individual needs, including specialized templates designed by our team of SPED experts. Use these as a starting point to developing your own customized templates for your readers’ individual needs.

Personalized Reader Tools include:

• •Custom Fonts
• •Visible Lines
• •Screen Contrast
• •Follow-Along & Read-Aloud options
• •Blur Mode
• •Highlight Shading
• •Cover & Reveal Mode
• •Word Bubbles for CVI students
• •News Ticker Mode
• •Spotlight & Laser Tools
• •Time on Task
• •Text-to-Speech
• •And more!

Explore Personalized Reader and our Accessibility Features more by clicking on their individual headings in the dropdown menu.

Personalized Reader for Struggling Readers

LightSail’s revolutionary Personalized Reader allows kids to open any one of LightSail’s thousands of high-interest books and get the exact visual, auditory, and behavioral accommodations they need to build reading confidence.

Built to support students with challenges like ADHD, dyslexia, autism, visual impairments, and Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI), LightSail has 60 different tools to customize the Personalized Reader and adapt it to each student’s needs with options to save in individual templates.

Teachers can begin with specialized templates developed by expert SPED educators for specific learning needs. Use these templates as a foundation & then further personalize with additional tools & accommodations to support each individual student’s needs. Gamification within the Personalized Reader rewards students for time spent on task with games and/or destressing break time, all controlled by the teacher.

Some Feature Highlights:

• •Adjustable viewing window to see 1, 3, or 5 lines of text
• •Ability to change color and adjust the font, background, border, outlines, and more
• •Embedded scaffolds assist the student to focus on just a few words at a time and covering all surrounding words
• •See text light up in ‘karaoke mode’ as the student reads along at their natural pace
• •Listen to the book read aloud using state-of-the art AI - choose from many anthropomorphic voices
• •Enlarge words and track the part of speech and syllables for each word
• •Time on Task option allows students to break with games or destressing activities as a reward
• •Break down words into syllables for specific decoding practice
• •Individual word study with instant definitions, pronunciation, syllabification, synonyms in a word web, and more!
• •Research-based accommodations for students with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI), including the Roman Bubble and word streaming for any text

This is the perfect tool to help struggling readers improve their skills, build confidence, and experience the true joy of reading.

Learn more by watching our Personalized Reader Intro Video!

Or come for a full Walk-Through Tour of Personalized Reader.

And then visit our Personalized Reader site to learn more and try out a demo version!

Accessibility (WCAG) 2.1

Following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 international standards assures students using the accessibility tools SHARK® and NVDA can continue to read and grow their literacy skills on LightSail.

LightSail’s entire site offers successful techniques for those needing additional accommodations, including support for students with a wide range of abilities. Offering a firm foundation for access, LightSail has ensured its platform offers accessibility options that are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust in accordance with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

Options that LightSail offers currently include, but are not limited to, text alternatives & options, time-based media, captions, adaptability, images, keyboard accessibility, navigable modules, and input modalities. We continue to review and stay up-to-date on future WCAG developments to ensure all students have the opportunity to grow on LightSail.

Vocabulary

Research shows that increased exposure to vocabulary in context is one of the most effective ways for students to acquire new words. LightSail’s digital literacy platform provides you with the tools to encourage student language growth through targeted vocabulary & grammatical study with words coming alive in each book.

With a wide range of tools to support vocabulary development & grammatical understanding, LightSail’s platform offers flexibility and individualized options for students at all reading and ability levels. At LightSail, we encourage mastery of all concepts, and offer students multiple chances to learn and retain vocabulary and grammatical concepts.

LightSail offers the following modules:

• •Word Work
• •Spelling Bee
• •Vocabulary Assignments
• •Word Journeys - Vocabulary
• •Word Journeys - Grammar

Each student can study contextualized vocabulary and grammar at their "just-right" level based on books they’ve chosen to read, and can also master curriculum objectives with teacher-uploaded and guided vocabulary and grammatical concepts.

Word Work

LightSail’s Word Work feature helps your students to review & comprehend vocabulary words they have missed over the course of their reading.

Word Work is designed to prompt your student in multiple ways to review and practice common vocabulary challenges. When a student exits out of or completes a book, they are prompted to retake any missed reading Clozes (fill-in-the-blanks). Through Book Overlays, the History tab, and the Word Work tab, a student can see precisely which assignments require further study. And a teacher can also send their students a reminder to perform Word Work from the Vocabulary tab of their own Dashboard.

With Word Work, you don’t have to worry that your student is senselessly practicing information they have already mastered. It is a tool that gives your students focused practice and additional support targeted specifically to areas they need to work on. This allows for remediation and mastery of vocabulary within the LightSail module directly related to the books your students are reading.

Spelling Bee

Forget photo copies of weekly spelling lists and regular Friday quizzes. With LightSail’s Spelling Bee module, you can assign students ongoing spelling bees for the course of the school term and then monitor their increasing vocabulary progress throughout the year. It takes less than 60 seconds to set up a Friday Bee for the entire school year!

Instead of giving every student the same exact words each week, LightSail Spelling Bees are individualized for each student’s precise level, giving them fresh, new words that align with the content they’re reading and their exact Lexile level. Each student will be quizzed on words at their individual reading level, and, as their reading level increases throughout the year, the Spelling Bee words will adapt to continually match their increased vocabulary growth. This ensures mastery of challenging words within a complete vocabulary & spelling experience.

Students:

• •Hear the word in multiple ways - read aloud and in context
• •See and hear the word’s synonyms in LightSail’s unique word web
• •Get two chances to spell the word
• •Earn badges for achievements

No paperwork, no deciphering handwriting, no teacher grading - just consistent spelling and vocabulary acquisition at each student’s exact reading level that continues to adapt and grow along with them.

It’s the Spelling Bee of the 21st century!

Learn more HERE!

Vocabulary Assessments

Embedded Cloze assessments within LightSail’s book library continuously monitor your students’ Lexile® growth. Geared toward growing comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, these assessment questions bring an element of gamified fun while reading Power Texts.

If a student incorrectly answers a Cloze assessment, they have the option to retake it using the Word Work tool. A teacher can also create additional assessments using vocabulary words that their class or individual students are struggling with.

A teacher can choose from a set of questions provided by the platform or create their own questions. They can also use words that were incorrectly answered by their students, words matching a selected Lexile® level, or they can even add their own words. Questions could ask students to provide a definition using context clues or use the word in a sentence, and many more.

These assessments provide teachers with valuable insight to their students’ vocabulary, and can be used to build a vocabulary unit to ensure student mastery.

Word Journeys

LightSail’s Word Journeys empower teachers to use the versatility of LightSail’s integrated literacy platform to scaffold, enhance, and develop targeted vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. This helps build confidence for all learners, especially struggling and emergent readers and English language learners.

Word Journeys is a multi-faceted module where students can have a well-rounded, multi-layered grammatical experience. Each student has their own Word Journey personalized to their individual Lexile® level that adapts with their literacy gains, supported by their teacher’s expertise & guidance via the LightSail platform.

LightSail helps teachers to personalize word journeys for each student, exposing them to and helping them to practice vocabulary, parts of speech, syllabification, punctuation & grammar contextually, in books both assigned by their teacher and chosen by them. No matter which book they choose, their complete Word Journey will be active as they read. Build confidence for all learners, especially struggling and emergent readers & ELL.

Word Journeys - Vocabulary

Targeted vocabulary can now be driven both by the teacher and automatically by LightSail’s own Lexile®-informed algorithms. The LightSail system gathers problem words for each individual student and stores them in the student’s own Word Journey to ensure increased exposure.

Words can be added through:

• •Missed vocabulary cloze responses
• •Imported word lists by the teacher
• •Individual word additions for enhanced mastery
• •Word Rules that allows for targeted vocabulary practice

Word Rules trigger additional practice, prompting students to practice this word in multiple ways - pronunciation, parts of speech, breakdown syllables, define word, synonyms, listen, or word bubble for CVI students.

Research shows that increased exposure to vocabulary in context is one of the most effective ways for students to acquire new words. LightSail’s digital literacy platform provides you with the tools to encourage student language growth through targeted vocabulary & grammatical study with words coming alive in each book.

Personalized vocabulary study for students allows the opportunity for each student to master their individual vocabulary lists - a 21st-century approach to language study!

Fluency Builder & Running Record

LightSail’s Fluency Builder tool helps students develop their oral reading fluency, speaking, and listening skills. Using any text in our platform, teachers can create a Read Aloud assignment. Through this assignment, teachers will gain valuable insight into students’ ability to decode the text and narrate, and tracks the student’s Words Correct Per Minute (WPM) rate. Additional highlights of this feature include:

• •Filter content to use targeted passages for fluency practice
• •Score using a digital Running Record and/or customizable rubrics
• •Incorporate added Retelling Activities into students’ final grade
• •Create speaking, listening, and writing activities that include images and/or recordings
• •Model customized assignment questions using your state’s assessment or international assessments such as TOEFL or IELTS
• •Review of recorded content before submission by students
• •Provide written or oral (voice message) feedback for each assignment
• •See, export, and/or print clear and organized results

Fluency Builder assignment recordings archive all year long, building a digital portfolio of student progress!

Videos

Enhance students’ personalized learning experience with thousands of educational videos available within the LightSail platform. LightSail connects thousands of books with sharable related videos, making it so much easier to find videos and books that match what the student is reading. Embedded action clips (GIFs) also make each book come alive, enhancing both student comprehension and the reading experience. Imagine reading about cheetahs and then seeing them sprint at 70 MPH!

Teachers can...

• •Add to assignments and homework
• •Enhance current curricular study
• •Incentize student reading goals by unlocking videos when achieved
• •Embed action clips in their own teacher-authored books or imported content
• •Import their own video content for use within the platform
• •Share relevant video clips with fellow educators
• •Fully control which clips and when students can watch

Students can experience...

• •Thousands of 1- to 5-minute contextualized educational videos integrated within books
• •Thousands of 30-second contextualized Video Action Clips hyperlinked within key vocabulary
• •Embedded action clips in their own student-authored books
• •Import their own video clips to embed in their student-authored books

Blended Learning Tools

With blended learning a 21st-century necessity, LightSail’s unique remote learning tools ensure that your classroom can adapt at a moment’s notice to the need for at-home learning and the updates that are released by your district.

Hybrid Teaching Tools Feature Set includes:

Teacher Dashboard

• •Actively monitor your students’ current activity, including their reading minutes, Cloze activity, & books being read
• •Class Leaderboard and your students’ rankings
• •Students’ progress towards reaching their weekly reading goals
• •Give & review assignments
• •Monitor progress in real-time

Private Teacher-to-Student Chat

• •Individual teacher-to-student chat for personal reminders & messages sent to their Dashboard
• •Fast, easy, and effective way for students to communicate with teachers
• •No private student-to-student chatting!

Class Chat

• •Classwide announcements sent with one easy message
• •Classroom dialogue around a book, subject, or lesson initiated by teacher
• •Conversation controlled by the teacher, with mute & unmute options
• •Incognito messaging option for all students to promote inclusion & equity (controlled by teacher)

Group Chat for Educators

• •Collaboratative planning with grade-level teachers in your school or across the district
• •Private/customized groups for intensive discussion, mentoring, & coaching
• •Seamless distribution of targeted content to teachers and students with in-text sharing

Class Settings

On LightSail, students get a personalized learning to ELA, guided by their teachers behind-the-scenes within the Class Settings module. Both teachers and administrators have full control of the many LightSail features and functionality options. In addition, administrators can monitor higher-level views of class and school achievement.

Teachers can opt to use the default settings recommended by LightSail based on grade level, and then personalize learning by setting addition options for students or turning off default settings. Differentiating learning for all levels of student and providing instant accommodations to students, teachers can now control an individual learning experience per student that meets the needs of their curriculum and classroom culture. And, as students grow and adapt, the teacher can continue to adjust their LightSail modules, guiding them toward mastery every day.

Class Settings include:

• •Quick & easy Rostering
• •Weekly and Monthly Reading Goals
• •Annotations & Voice Recordings
• •Contextualized Cloze assessments during Free Reading and/or Power Texts
• •Educator-developed, standards-aligned Short Response & Multiple Choice Questions
• •Access to certain texts & videos/video clips
• •Camera option (enable or disable)
• •On-screen Language options & access to Spanish-language books
• •Display of Class Leaderboard
• •Audio Options
• •Tournament participation and options
• •Think Feeds & Class Feeds
• •Class chat options
• •CVI student settings

In addition, when enabling Personalized Reader Mode for struggling readers, teachers can further adjust the instant accommodations available per child, including templates allowed, the ability to edit settings and/or create their own templates, and Word Rules. They can even set up the Time on Task tool, giving students a set game or destressing break after they’ve met their minimum reading goal, even down to the activities they can see.

All student progress tracks and records automatically within the LightSail system, lifting the grading load from the teacher and preserving a comprehensive view of student performance over time - minutes, days, months, and even school years!

Homework

Teachers can quickly create flexible one-time or repetitive homework assignments from their Dashboard, then effortlessly track student engagement & completion to increase student accountability.

When creating an assignment, teachers decide:

• •Cloze assessments required
• •Minutes required to complete the assignment
• •Days of the week per assignment
• •Book choice, assigned book, or a genre/topic guideline

Students are updated in real time on their Dashboard on assignments and all other work within the LightSail platform, giving Homework a personalized approach for 21st-century blended learners.

Assessments

More than 40,000 U.S. educator-developed, standards-aligned Short Response and Multiple Choice questions can be activated for students within the Lightsail platform. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Lexile®-aligned vocabulary cloze items are embedded in our books to enhance student multimodal learning and comprehension. Exemplar answers written by educators for educators align to state standards, including Common Core and other state standards. Rubric are available to teachers as well for grading short-response items.

Student performance and responses are tracked and reported on Student, Teacher, & Admin Dashboards. This allows for continuous monitoring of analytics by the students’ educational team - themselves, their teacher, their parents, and the administrator. The Analytics provided within the LightSail platform empower boht students & teachers, with frequent opportunities for metacognitive growth, awareness, and tracking against targeted learning outcomes.

For more information on the LightSail Assessment Components, including our MetaMetrics Integration, click HERE to download a resource guide.

Gamification

Motivate your students & personalize learning in multimodal ways within the LightSail platform! Modules include their own gamified options, providing personal incentives for positive student growth, including our popular badges and video rewards. All gamification options are fully-controlled by the classroom teacher in their Classroom Settings.

Gamification options include:

• •Student Leaderboard tracking minutes read per classroom
• •Personal Cloze Roll shows real-time scoring of embedded assessments
• •Personal Grammar & Spelling Bee Rolls motivate with encouragement and tracked scores
• •Badges consistently earned for personal student achievements, including reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary awards
• •Time on Task option within Personalized Reader Mode giving game or destress activity rewards for reading goals achieved

And don’t forget to check out our Tournaments page to learn about Reading and Grammar Tournaments!

Students love earning the badges and the additional gamified motivation, as you can see in our Student Testimonial video!

Tournaments

What if you could run a competition like March Madness, where students compete by reading, dueling each other in a digital, bracketed tournament? Welcome to LightSail’s Tournament Module, part of our literacy platform where educators and administrators can challenge their students in 21st-century literacy competitions with just a few simple clicks.

LightSail’s Tournament Module is a one-of-a-kind platform for students to engage in friendly and constructive competition that ignites their reading engagement and motivation while driving their literacy learning outcomes.

Versatile and easy-to-set-up reading & grammar tournaments for classrooms, schools, or districts. Bracketed or leaderboard tournaments drive reading & grammar engagement with constructive, healthy competition while students read at their exact reading level!

Tournament metrics include:

• •minutes read
• •pages read
• •words read
• •comprehension questions (cloze) correctly answered
• •grammatical concepts correctly answered

Teachers can curate specific book collections, categories, topics, and grammatical metrics to support specific educational goals within tournaments. Format tournaments with school-against-school or intra-district competition. Embedded tools for engaging community sponsors and families.

And with LightSail’s Personalized Reader, all students have the support and accommodations they need to equitably participate.

Leave the heavy lifting to LightSail, as we score and compile data, pair students for head-to-head competition, and calculate the winners. Get your community involved with sponsors that appear at the bottom of a public bracket for real-time action! Even add prizes for another way to motivate students.

Make literacy gains, foster school spirit, and even support fundraising goals with LightSail Tournaments!

To learn more about Tournaments, watch our Intro to Tournaments Video.

LightSail sponsors its own tournaments throughout the year as well! To learn more, check out our March Madness Reading Tournament & Summer Reading Slam sites.

Analytics

With extensive real-time reporting and analytics within the LightSail platform, the students’ entire learning team can receive actionable insights on achievement across multiple levels. The robust reporting functionality provides extensive data and insights of student progress across more than 150 metrics with customizable date ranges. In addition, research proves that intelligent analytics inform data-driven decision making within the classroom, schools, and at the district level.

This provides accountability for the entire educational team, providing a transparent measure of literacy and learning impact. Performance and engagement measures include reading minutes, Lexile® growth, assessment metrics, as well as tracking of comparative data and books completed.

REPORTS FOR ADMINISTRATORS (Click to download examples)

• •High-level key data review at the district level, including engagement & performance indicators
• •Filtering based on date ranges, grades, classes, and more
• •Class Statistics across multiple levels, including in-depth statistics of every utilized LightSail module
• •Highlighting of classes where performance or engagement gaps exist
• •Student statistics for insight into achievement and challenges, including reading metrics, cloze scores, & Lexile® levels
• •Flexible & comprehensive reporting of key progress metrics from the inception of student reading activity
• •District and school statistics for insights by grade, class, teacher, and student
• •Color-coding for at-a-glance understanding of student achievement
• •Easy downloading of reports in Excel or CSV format

REPORTS FOR TEACHERS (Click to download examples)

• •Student statistics for insight into achievement and challenges, including reading metrics, cloze scores, & Lexile® levels
• •Student assessment tracking providing insight into student achievement and challenges in standards-aligned reading skills
• •Class Statistics snapshot videw of key aggregate class-level data, including in-depth statistics of every utilized LightSail module
• •Teacher Dashboard provides real-time updates on key class and student data metrics, with a customizable column display
• •Consistent monitoring of student and class achievement vs. goals for insight and adaptation of curriculum & student tools
• •Flexible & comprehensive reporting of key progress metrics from the inception of student reading activity
• •Filtering based on date ranges, grades, classes, and more
• •Color-coding for at-a-glance understanding of student achievement

REPORTS FOR STUDENTS & PARENTS (Click to download examples)

• •Individual student snapshot of key, personal ltieracy achievement data, including personalized Lexile® metrics & predictions
• •Personalized reading activity calender
• •Personalized grade-level skills mastery indicator
• •Incremental personal reading achievements vs. goals
• •Student Dashboard encourages metacognitive growth with consistent real-time reporting of personal results
• •Parent Portal provides a gateway to observe student progress with data highlights, scores, achievements, assignments, goals, & assessments
• •Filtering based on date ranges, grades, classes, and more
• •Color-coding for at-a-glance understanding of student achievement

Parent Portal

LightSail supports including parents/guardians in an integral role in their child’s literacy growth and development. Share your student’s literacy journey with the Parent Portal, providing real-time information and access to student progress for parents and guardians. The Parent Portal is the gateway to observe your student’s progress and to assist with classroom development. Engage and involve your students’ families directly in literacy growth and progress by encouraging family discussion of reading, writing, and literacy learning.

PARENTS SUPPORT GROWTH IN:

• •Overall data highlights
• •Lexile® scores & reading metrics
• •Badges earned
• •Goal setting and goal achievement
• •Assessment results
• •Homework, including outstanding assignments
• •Child’s digital library

Both students & teachers can easily invite parents/guardians to participate in this shared learning experience, available both in English and Spanish.

For more information on our resources for parents/guardians available within the Parent Portal, visit our PARENTS page.

To encourage parents, invite them to watch our Parent Welcome Video to explore the potential and power of LightSail in their students’ lives.

e-Bookstore

With LightSail’s integrated e-Bookstore teachers and administrators can purchase or rent from thousands of additional award-winning popular and contemporary fiction & nonfiction titles from the world’s leading publishers.

Teachers can compile a Book Request List and teachers/administrators can fulfill these requests by PO or credit card payment. Teachers can also set up Class Wish Lists so that family members can help contribute directly to their classroom library.

PUBLISHER PARTNERS

Notable Publishers include Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Abrams, Candlewick, Britannica Educational Publishing, Saddleback Educational Publishing, and many more.

Build your digital library with LightSail!