Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Lexia Learning Rebrands Award-Winning Rosetta Stone English as Lexia English Language Development

BOSTON (July 12, 2021) – Lexia Learning, a Cambium Learning® Group company, today announced the official rebrand of Rosetta Stone® English to Lexia® English Language Development™ (Lexia English). The name change follows Cambium’s divestiture of Rosetta Stone’s languages division.

Lexia English joins the robust Lexia suite of literacy products in helping all students to reach their academic potential, enhancing educational equity, and empowering Emergent Bilinguals to progress linguistically and academically. Lexia is now the sole source provider of the K-6 English language development solution.

“While the product’s name and look have changed, its curriculum remains the same,” said Lexia President Nick Gaehde. “In addition to renaming the product, we’re releasing version 2.0, which contains new tools to help Emergent Bilingual students as they learn academic English and empower educators to streamline instruction and ensure their efficacy.”…Read More

Rosetta Stone Announces Winners of the Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year Award Program

Rosetta Stone Inc. announced the 10 winners in its first Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year award program. A total of $20,000 in grant donations and $75,000 in subscriptions to the Rosetta Stone® English for Education language learning program were awarded to teachers of English learners (EL).

Victor Machado, an ESL teacher at East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, won the $10,000 grand prize, along with a schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English. The two runners-up are Timothy McGrath and Virginia Valdez. McGrath is a K-5 ELL teacher at West View Elementary School, a small inner-city school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Valdez is a kindergarten teacher at Minnie Mars Jamieson Elementary at Chicago Public Schools. Each won $5,000 grants as well as the schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English.

Machado was nominated by the Bilingual Department Chairperson Brian Donovan who submitted an essay describing how Machado helps his students. Donovan wrote of Machado: “He is able to synthesize all the tools required to educate a student and turn his class into a fun engaging ESL lab, where technology is used to leverage student achievement and where students take ownership of their education.”…Read More

Lexia Core5 and PowerUp Helped Students and Teachers Succeed with Remote Blended Learning

The 2019-20 school year drew concern for students’ learning when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to rapidly transition to remote learning. To understand the impact to student learning, Lexia Learning, a Rosetta Stone company (NYSE: RST), surveyed 3,500 educators and found that

during the educational disruption period brought on by school closures during the spring semester, 86% of survey respondents using Lexia® Core5® Reading (Core5) or Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® (PowerUp) with their students felt that the products helped them more efficiently support student needs and learning. Moreover, those students who were able to access Lexia Learning products during the disruption were able to spend more time using the products each week, resulting in increased progress.

“During the stress and uncertainty of COVID, teachers were able to not only provide continuity of instruction, but they were able to support students in making independent progress in these extraordinary times,” said Dr. Liz Brooke, chief learning officer of Rosetta Stone. “Districts need to remain vigilant in choosing blended learning tools that provide some method for monitoring student learning/progress and deliver results in a variety of learning environments. Providing products that are proven to drive progress in closing literacy gaps, and support educators with actionable, real-time data on student progress, whether used in the classroom or at home remains our top priority.”…Read More

Lexia PowerUp Literacy Wins Best Personalized/Adaptive Learning Tool

For the second time in two months, Lexia Learning, a Rosetta Stone company (NYSE: RST) has had two of its literacy programs recognized as standouts in a prominent edtech award program. In this latest award program, Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® (PowerUp) was recognized as a winner in the category of Best Personalized/Adaptive Learning App or Tool. The company’s highly-regarded Lexia® Core5® Reading (Core5) was also named a finalist in the category for Best Literacy App or Tool.

This is the fourth year of the Tech Edvocate Awards, which recognizes outstanding edtech products that support students across the Pre-K-20 sector by catering to identified classroom and learning needs. Winners and finalists were selected by a panel of educators and industry experts who reviewed the submissions and judged the products and services based on the extent to which they are transforming education through the development or advocacy of edtech. A complete list of winners of the 2020 Tech Edvocate Awards can be found here.

“The Tech Edvocate Awards represent the combined opinion of industry insiders, knowledgeable educators, and interested parents,” said Lexia President, Nick Gaehde. “It’s an honor to have our literacy programs recognized as solutions that are positively impacting teaching and learning—and having access to adaptive, personalized tools has never been more important than during this unprecedented time of COVID-19.”…Read More

6 ways to connect with ELL parents

There’s no secret formula for parent engagement. And when English isn’t their first language, the obstacles seem more daunting. Connecting with ELL parents can help educators better support students—and there are some strategies to help.

According to Rick Castaneda, a training specialist at Rosetta Stone, the key is to develop a multi-step approach that gives parents several different opportunities to connect with the school and their children’s teachers while also making sure that the parent, no matter their language, feels like a key part of the decision-making process.

In his edWebinar, “Involve Parents for Greater English Learner Success,” Castaneda discussed six key areas of parental involvement, based on the work of Johns Hopkins professor Joyce L. Epstein, PhD, and how each one helps build a stronger relationship.…Read More

An Overview of our Supplemental ELL Curriculum

Our digital English language curriculum is designed to help schools and districts to improve learning outcomes for non-native English speakers in grades 4-10. Watch this overview video to learn more about our ELL curriculum and how we are helping student expand their English language skills.

School system makes world languages available to military and ELL families through digital access program

Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) is on a mission to bring language learning resources to its diverse community and student body of more than 33,500. As CMCSS also serves military families stationed at nearby Fort Campbell, many students have brought world language experience gained while overseas to the classroom, contributing to the more than 40 languages now being spoken in the district and the need for a comprehensive single solution to meet CMCSS’ diverse language learning needs.

To improve and broaden language learning resources for its students and community, CMCSS today announced it has partnered with Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE: RST) to extend its world language program to military families and adult learners, in addition to supplementing traditional language learning instruction to its middle and high school students and English-language learners.

“Because so many different languages are spoken in our school district, it is critical that the language needs of our highly diverse community are effectively addressed through a proven standardized program,” said Dr. Kimi Sucharski, District Accountability and Data Analyst, Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. “We are proud to be able to offer these languages and resources to our students, especially for our international and English-language learners, from such a trusted and reputable partner. Our students are so comfortable working in an online environment – this just made sense.”…Read More

7 digital resources for students learning English or any other language

In classrooms all across the country, old-fashioned textbooks and stodgy lesson plans are sucking the life out of language learning. These classes leave so many learners apathetic or frustrated as they recite scripted dialog or memorize an endless litany of verb conjugations. Who said that language learning had to be so boring?

These days, thanks to digital technology, we have the resources to resuscitate language learning and make it the adventure it should be.

There are many advantages to digital language learning over classroom instruction, including access to content at any time, in any location, and current technologies make content interactive, as opposed to stuffy foreign language textbooks.…Read More