WHERE TO BEGIN ?

The easy answer is to simply start at Level 1.  Even teens and adults can benefit from beginning at Level 1 in order to develop phonological awareness and learn how to focus on speech sounds as separate units from the letters that represent them.  Of course, an older child or adult beginning at Level 1 will need a much different set of words than would a young child. Clinicians can adjust the Word Bank for any age client.  And the Socratic methods used in the Orton-Gillingham approach are adjustable across the life span.*

USING THE THE Z-SCREENER© TO PIN-POINT WHERE TO BEGIN

Lexercise Clinicians (i.e, licensed professionals who have a Lexercise user name and password) can administer The Clinician Z-Screener  to help them determine precisely where a client's word structure knowledge is breaking down. There are two versions of the Clinician Z-Screener:  a  paper version and an online version. Lexercise Clinicians can access these two versions here.

The Z-Screener is a step-wise procedure for evaluating the orthographic processing required in the first 13 Levels of Lexercise. It focuses on:

1) the (five) short vowel sounds in closed-syllables;

2) syllable-ending single consonants (including those spelled with digraphs);

3) syllable-ending consonant blends;

4) closed-syllable words with inflectional suffixes.  

 If the client is able to read >90% of the Z-Screener words accurately s/he should begin Lexercise at Level 14, the level at which multisyllabic words and syllable division is addressed.

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*If you would like to learn more about the structure of English orthography and how to use the research-backed methods of the Orton-Gillingham approach for treating language-literacy impaired clients, check out the  Lexercise online professional education courses, designed for (busy) working professionals.