LukuLab training system for young struggling readers

Research shows that 20% of kids are born as struggling readers. Only ~3% of kids are diagnosed with dyslexia and entitled to reading intervention in schools. Meanwhile, ~17% do not receive the necessary help. Private tuition also has limited availability and may be extremely expensive. This is a huge problem for the children, their parents, schools, and society. It increases teachers' workload, depletes parents' finances, and stifles learning and career outcomes for struggling readers.

The problem affects about 163 million children aged 6-11 in English-speaking countries only.

Dyslexia was very well researched in 2000-2010. But the modern research remains unused and unknown by teachers. Current teaching reading favors phonics as a main teaching method. Phonics was known since the beginning of the 20th century and was brought to teachers' attention in the 1950s. It was reborn in the 21st century under the umbrella term of 'Science of Reading'. The method is opposed to the so-called 'whole language' approach and is better for struggling readers than the conception of a 'word guessing game' based on context. Still, the 'Science of Reading' movement doesn't profit from all available modern reading research. Teaching practices based on the 'Science of Reading' use an oversimplified notion of phonemic awareness and do not take into account other sides of linguistic awareness such as prosody, morphology, syntax, etc.   

Therefore the problem has 2 sides:

1. Reading intervention is unavailable or too expensive for the majority of young struggling and dyslexic readers.

2. Teaching practices are not informed about modern reading research and do not use it.   

LukuLab is a special reading program for struggling and dyslexic learners aged 6 - 11 who are not making progress through their current intervention or who are still waiting for an assessment. It is created for English-speaking children but can be adapted to many languages.

LukuLab incorporates modern reading research such as:

• learner corpora analysis of children's reading mistakes
• Research connecting rhythm and reading, 
• rapid automated naming and dyslexia, 
• research in remediation of after-stroke alexia, 
• research in action games and visual attention. 

The program can be implemented in schools as well as at home. A child completes tasks with the help of a grown-up - a teacher or a parent. The program does not require teachers or parents to be trained in special education: all exercises have clear instructions. 
LukuLab trains phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The program is based on our corpus of reading errors of dyslexic children aged 6-11. The analysis of the corpus data allowed us to identify ~50 types of frequent reading errors. Our program divides reading into 50 special small skills. Every week it tests a learner's ability in 2 new skills and recreates a personalized learning track for the learner based on their performance. 

We believe in play-based learning: while interacting with animated characters and playing language games children with dyslexia and ADHD can maintain their attention longer. 

Our teammates are computational linguists, teachers, web developers, and financial professionals. We have created an online school for struggling readers and have 3 years of experience in providing successful reading interventions. 

We launched our beta version at the end of 2023 and onboarded more than 400 users. We are contacting schools to conduct pilots. 

LukuLab graduated from the Helsinki EdTech Incubator and the UCL EdTech Lab accelerator in London in 2023.

Our end-users are struggling readers between the ages of 6 and 11. Our customers are both the parents of these children and the schools they attend. Research indicates that poor reading is the primary cause of a child's failure in elementary school. Approximately 20% of individuals are born with a neurobiological condition that makes reading challenging. However, not every school in the United States has adopted a reading curriculum that suits the needs of these students in the best way. Individualized support is also not available to every child. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, out of the 20% of students who are at risk of not achieving grade-level reading, only 2.7% receive free special education services in the US. Although private reading clinics have shown positive results, their tuition is often unaffordable for many families. Classroom teachers and parents require an effective solution to this problem,  however, without teaching materials and professional guidance, they are unable to provide reading intervention on their own.

LukuLab is an adaptive learning program designed to provide daily training for young struggling readers. The teaching methods that are effective for struggling readers differ from those typically used in a classroom setting. Based on our own practical experience and research, our team has developed a database of tasks that children need to complete to become proficient readers. Our program requires the assistance of an adult, but no special preparation is necessary. Any adult - whether a parent, classroom teacher, older sibling, or volunteer - can help a child with their learning.

Our program has the potential to significantly impact the academic performance of learners, as well as improve the well-being of teachers and parents. By offering personalized reading intervention through EdTech, LukuLab can help learners achieve academic success without overloading teachers with additional preparation or families with financial burden. Using our EdTech reading program classroom teachers can accelerate the learning of lower-performing students while remaining attentive to the needs of the rest of the class. 

Our Team Lead Anna Levinzon is a linguist, researcher, and university professor with more than 30 years of experience in education. Anna's background is in academia, and she has brought on board some of her graduate students and university colleagues to form the core of our team.

Our team has created several educational projects including an online school for struggling readers.  Our other team members have extensive experience in providing a research-based reading intervention for young struggling and dyslexic readers.  

We are daily communicating with the parents of young dyslexic readers and know their struggles and problems firsthand. 

We have built and launched our MVP.

The landing page is https://lukulab.com/

The web application is https://lukulab.fi/

After the launch in November 2023, we onboarded more than 400 customers. We are contacting schools to pilot our solution. 

LukuLab has graduated from four incubator and accelerator programs in Finland and the UK. 

LukuLab is still in the early stage and is working on its product-market fit. We would be glad to get support in that area as well as increase our visibility, and find partners and mentors supporting our Go to Market efforts in the USA. 

Full time: 2 founders

Part-time: 8 team members

Contractors: 1 person

We have been working on LukuLab 1 year.

LukuLab business model is B2B SaaS. We provide subscriptions for schools based on the number of licenses.