What is the eSpark Reading Lab?
With Reading Lab, students work through word lists while eSpark’s AI-powered tutor, Fennec, listens to their pronunciation and delivers just-in-time microinterventions for words they struggle with.
How it works
Each Reading Lab activity is aligned with a specific foundational reading skill. Students are given an opportunity to pronounce five different words throughout the activity. eSpark’s friendly Reading Lab host, Fennec the Fox, listens to and analyzes those pronunciations.
If a student gets a word correct, Fennec will mark it correct and move on to the next one. If a student gets a word incorrect, Fennec will deliver a real-time “microintervention” to guide the student in the right direction. Currently microinterventions consist of Fennec breaking the word down to the phoneme level, modeling the correct pronunciation of each, and then blending the sounds together to make the full word. The student is then asked to do the same thing.
Once the activity is complete, teachers can see how many words students answered correctly and listen to the audio recording of each word. If five or more students have completed Reading Lab activities in a given day, teachers will also receive an email summary with student grouping recommendations and suggested Assignments for students who need more support.
Is there any additional setup required?
The only unique consideration for Reading Lab is microphone permissions on student devices. For detailed technical instructions and troubleshooting, check out this article.
Reading Lab via Assignments
Reading Lab is available via Assignments in the teacher dashboard. From the Assignments tab, type “Reading Lab” into the search bar. This will bring all Reading Lab activities to the top. Note: you can also search for the skill, e.g. “r blend” or “ch digraph.”
The Student Experience
Students will see the Reading Lab Assignment in the From My Teacher section at the top of their screen when they log in. The most recent Assignment will show first in the list.
Each Reading Lab Assignment is composed of three parts:
An instructional video that introduces students to the assigned skill.
A concise 2-minute explainer video that walks students through how to complete the activity. (Note: These explainer videos will be included in early back-to-school activities but may be left out for future activities as students gain confidence.)
The Reading Lab activity itself.
Fennec will guide students through the activity, progressing through a list of five words. The activity adapts based on how students respond—if they pronounce every word correctly, they will breeze through the activity, and a 100% accuracy score will be reported to the teacher. If they have trouble, Fennec will deliver real-time microinterventions after each misread word.
After modeling the correct pronunciation at the phoneme level, then blending those sounds to make the full word, Fennec will ask the student to do the same thing. If the student still doesn’t get it correct, Fennec will say the word aloud one more time before marking it wrong and moving to the next one.
After five words are complete, Fennec will congratulate the student on their hard work and provide a recap of the full word list.
View the results
Once a student has completed a Reading Lab Assignment, teachers can view progress in the My Assignments area of their Assignments dashboard. Simply pick the Assignment you want to review to see scores for all students who have completed it. Click a student’s name to see which words they got correct/incorrect and to listen to audio recordings of each response.
When your students complete five or more Reading Lab activities in a day, you’ll receive an email summary of which students are struggling and the ability to assign remediation lessons with just one click. These emails also include a link to schedule the next lesson in your scope and sequence.
keywords for search: Reading Lab, Phonics Decoding