Frequently Asked Questions About Lexercise Therapy

Basic Therapy gives you Structured Literacy (Orton-Gillingham) intervention at an affordable price. Each lesson generally lasts a week and has two components:

• Weekly Lesson with Virtual Literacy Therapist: Each week you will watch a 10-minute parent training video and then deliver a 45-minute, interactive online therapy lesson to your child. The video and lesson materials are delivered by our founder and leading literacy expert, Sandie Barrie Blackley, and are designed to prompt your child for a response every 20 seconds.  
• Daily Practice:  The other 4 days of the week you and your child do practice to review and master what was taught in the lesson. Practice is of two types:
  1. games and videos your child does independently (~15 minutes) and
  2. review and assisted practice for you to do with your child (~15 minutes).  

Lessons are designed to be completed in one week.

For example, Monday you might do the lesson with your child and then Tuesday through Friday you and your child would do the online games and parent activities for practice so that your child can master the material and move on to the next lesson. The following week you move your child to the next lesson and repeat the process with the new information.

The Lexercise Orton-Gillingham curriculum has a total of 44 lessons.

The first lessons start with the most basic concepts of reading, writing and spelling. As your child advances, the lessons build upon past material. This allows your child to master the most complex items in English so that they can move forward in life as a confident, secure student.

Both Basic and Professional Therapies use the same Structured Literacy (Orton-Gillingham) curriculum that is proven to help with reading, writing and spelling problems. They also both include nearly the same parent activities and child games/videos (therapists have more activities and games at their disposal).

The main differences are price and time.

Professional Therapy costs more because you are paying for a professional therapist to customize your child’s lessons and practice and to provide you with ongoing support and advice. They are experts who do this for a living and must charge for their time and expertise. Having the support of a therapist allows your child to make very fast progress with most children being remediated in a matter of months. If you have the budget, this is the recommended route. 

However, not all families have the budget to work with a professional, so Basic Therapy is the most affordable way to get research-backed structured literacy (Orton-Gillingham) therapy.

• It’s self-paced, so you can do it on your schedule.
• You can message your therapist with brief questions.
• You can purchase a 45 minute session with your therapist if you hit material that you and your child would like help with.

Professional Therapy gives you the best in Structured Literacy intervention: an expert therapist, a research-backed curriculum and, daily practice. It is sold in 4-lesson sets, and each lesson generally lasts a week and has two components:

• A Live Instruction Lesson: Each week in one 45-minute, one-on-one, interactive online therapy lesson your therapist works with you and your child to illustrate, explain and make memorable the appropriate set of concepts at your child’s level.
• Daily Practice:  The other days of the week you and your child do practice to review and master what was taught in the one-on-one lesson. Your therapist adjusts practice for your child’s needs and your schedule.  Practice is of two types:
  1. games and videos your child does independently and
  2. review and assisted practice for you to do with your child.  

• Children: The average 1st grader is able to be fully engaged in Lexercise online therapy.

• Adults: Adults can also use the product since it is personalized by the therapist.

Lexercise is used throughout the English-speaking world.  It is an American English platform, but your therapist can adjust it for other English dialects (e.g., British English). If English is your child’s second language, they can still do this therapy, they just need to have had a minimum of 6 months of English language instruction.

First, keep in mind that this lesson is the same structured literacy lesson we used to do 8 years ago when we worked with children in brick-and-mortar clinics. Since we don’t need to physically touch the client to do this therapy, we can do it just as effectively online using our digital therapy materials and activities.

Once a week your Lexercise therapist meets with you and your child in a live 45-minute web-conferencing lesson. (Many of our therapists use Zoom for video conferencing.) In the first part of the lesson your therapist will do a review to make sure your child has mastered the material you practiced this week. After that your therapist will teach your child the new material in the next lesson using interactive online materials and physical pencil and paper activities.

After the live lesson, the therapist personalizes your practice for the week.  

Practice consists of two parts:

• Your child’s independent practice usually lasts about 15 minutes a day and might consist of videos, games and reading activities.
• Parent-led practice usually lasts about 15 minutes a day and consists of activities you do with your child both on and off the computer.

Doing it this way, we can let the computer do what it’s good at (rapid responses) while you do what can’t be done very well on the computer (vocabulary practice, handwriting practice, etc.).

An interesting fact is that in an average online session a therapist can get about 80 responses from your child. This is excellent. But compare this to the fact that in 10-15 minutes of playing our games, your child will get well over 100 responses! This is very meaningful practice.

Every day when you complete your practice, your practice data are recorded and shared with your therapist so they can monitor and assess your child’s progress.

Our expert therapists set their own rates, so prices vary by the person you work with.

The cost of Professional Therapy is higher than Basic Therapy because you are getting the focused support and expertise of a professional. Your therapist not only meets with you for a live one-on-one customized lesson each week, but they also personalize and monitor your daily practice and serve as your ongoing expert resource. Unlike many tutors, our therapists are qualified clinical professionals, and you are paying for their expertise, time and personalized support of you and your child.

We stand by our  product because it gets results! Our data show that about 90% of children who do Professional Therapy make a grade level of reading improvement in 8 weeks, so if we can’t get your child that level of improvement we’ll pay for your third month of therapy.

Your therapist will establish your child’s baseline reading level during the first session. This is done by using the San Diego Quick Assessment along with grade-leveled reading passages. In your 8th session, your therapist will re-assess your child’s reading level.

In the case when a third month of therapy is required, Lexercise pays for it, not your therapist. This keeps incentives aligned for therapists to do an accurate job of assessing your child’s progress.

Of course, for your child to make this level of progress, you have to show up for your sessions and do regular practice. For more specifics see this article.

Getting Started

In your very first lesson, your therapist will perform a language-processing assessment on your child. This assessment includes a battery of tests designed to identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses so that therapy can be personalized to their needs.

This testing allows your therapist to place your child at the appropriate place in the curriculum. So for example, if your child needs to start at Level 5, she will skip Levels 1-4. Why waste your time and money covering what your child already knows?

Personalization Throughout Your Therapy

Your therapist is regularly monitoring and customizing your child’s lessons and practice. So for example, if your child is strong in vocabulary but weak in phonological awareness, your therapist might decrease the time and activities each week for vocabulary practice and increase that of letter-sound practice.  Your therapist can see your child’s practice accuracy and fluency data and can customize things to truly meet your child’s personal needs.

The old way of doing  Orton-Gillingham therapy where parents would take their child to a brick-and-mortar clinic to meet with a therapist twice per week takes 2 to 3 years on average. But with Lexercise Professional Therapy a child can be remediated in a matter of months.

How many months? Well, it depends on the child. We’ve had some children be remediated in 3 months and for others it has taken up to 8 months or a bit longer. It just depends on the child’s individual needs.

Potentially, yes. The IRS definition of a qualified medical expense is quite broad and includes therapy for “learning disabilities” (AKA: dyslexia). See page 13 of this IRS publication (pdf).  We suggest that customers contact their accountant or tax preparer to determine if they qualify for this deduction. If it appears you will qualify, note that a physician’s recommendation is required.

Yes. To do this you will need to follow the IRS Publication for medical and dental expenses and have a physician’s recommendation. See the section in the IRS Publication on Special Education for details.

In 2016 the Publication 502, Medical and Dental Expenses (pdf), the section on Special Education said “You can include in medical expenses fees you pay on a doctor’s recommendation for a child’s tutoring by a teacher who is specially trained and qualified to work with children who have learning disabilities caused by mental or physical impairments, including nervous system disorders.”

When preparing your taxes, it may help to make a copy of Publication 502, circle the pertinent section and send it along, with your physician’s note to your tax preparer.

A physician’s recommendation is generally very easy to get. Here’s how:

• Make an appointment with your child’s primary care provider.
• Print and take this article along with you
• During the appointment, explain that you would like to get reading therapy for your child and that the IRS requires a physician’s written recommendation.
• Explain that the type of therapy you want to use is the same type recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and provide the printed article you brought with you as support. (We’d be happy to respond to your physician’s questions about these guidelines.)
• The physician can write this recommendation on a prescription pad or in a letter.
• File the physician’s letter with your taxes.