Lexia: An AI teaching tool for reading and comprehension

A third of children aged five are falling behind expected reading levels, with the trend increasing year on year (Holly Bancroft, 2024). Introducing Lexia. AI teaching tool for comprehension.

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Inspiration

Reading is the foundation of almost all learning, yet too many students are being left behind early in life.

In the UK, around 1 in 4 children leave primary school without meeting the expected standard in reading. When a child falls behind at this stage, it becomes much harder to catch up later which affects their long-term opportunities.

We wanted to build something genuinely useful for charities, schools, and families: a tool that acts like a patient reading tutor, adapts to each child, and puts comprehension first, not pressure.

What it does

Lexia is an adaptive reading coach for children that uses generative storytelling, speech analysis, and gentle comprehension checks to help children become confident, thoughtful readers.

It offers:

  • Gives children short stories based on their reading level and interests
  • Listens while they read and highlights words as they go
  • Helps with difficult words without telling them they are "wrong"
  • Asks quick questions to check they understood the story
  • Adapts future story pages based on what the child finds hard
  • Shows simple progress stats so charities and educators can see improvement

How we built it

React with HTML, Python

APIs: Claude was used for its intelligent reasoning capabilities to generate professional reports and the flexibility of generating engaging lesson plans and resources.

ElevenLabs was used as for text to speech, so students can learn phonics as well as added accessibility.

  • Story generation constrained by reading level, vocabulary, and phonics goals
  • Speech processing pipeline aligned to the expected text (not open dictation)
  • Streaming via WebSockets and server-sent events to keep the experience responsive
  • Learning profile that updates after each reading session

Challenges we ran into

Children’s speech is hard - Kids’ voices vary hugely by age, accent, and confidence. We had to be careful not to over-correct or mislabel natural variation as “errors”.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A fully functional tool that can be deployed to make a real impact to educators and children. Prioritising comprehension over speed, which many tools overlook Designing with charity constraints in mind: privacy, inclusivity, and accessibility

What's next for Lexia: An AI teaching tool for reading and comprehension

Multilingual capabilities: Expand to multilingual support and additional reading frameworks Add offline and low-connectivity modes for broader accessibility

Scalability: Our tool can be easily scaled up for global usage using cloud deployment, while maintaining security and speed.

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