Through ReadOhio and related literacy legislation, Ohio has made a serious commitment to early literacy. The state has defined what science-of-reading-aligned instruction should include: explicit, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing. Ohio has also taken a clear stance against three-cueing approaches that encourage students to guess at words using meaning, sentence structure, or visual cues instead of decoding [1].

Policies like these create the foundation for strong reading instruction. In classrooms, that foundation comes to life through the texts students read, the skills they practice, the feedback they receive, and the way teachers monitor progress.

LitLab supports that implementation work by helping teachers provide curriculum-aligned decodable practice, oral reading fluency routines, and skill-level feedback tied to the reading skills students are learning.

## Ohio has defined what strong reading instruction should look like

Ohio’s early literacy policy is grounded in decades of reading research. One of the clearest findings from that research is that learning to read is not the same as learning to speak. Most children need to be taught how print represents spoken language: how sounds map to letters, how spelling patterns work, and how accurate word reading becomes automatic enough to support fluent comprehension [2].

Ohio’s policy reflects that understanding. It emphasizes explicit, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing. Just as importantly, Ohio has made clear that beginning readers should not be taught to guess at words using pictures, sentence structure, or context. Students should be learning to decode the words on the page [1].

LitLab supports this vision by helping teachers provide reading practice that is connected to the skills students are learning. LitLab is not a replacement for a school’s Tier 1 curriculum. Instead, it functions as a practice layer that helps students apply taught phonics patterns in connected text.

When students are learning a specific phonics skill, teachers can use LitLab to find or create decodable texts aligned to that skill. This gives students more opportunities to practice decoding in context, not just on isolated word lists or worksheets.

## Strong materials still need enough aligned practice

Once a district has adopted a strong reading program, the next challenge is daily implementation. How do teachers give students enough practice with the exact skills being taught, without drifting away from the school’s core literacy curriculum?

LitLab is designed to help with that practice layer. Teachers can browse curriculum-aligned decodable texts or create their own custom decodables tied to specific phonics skills. They can generate fiction stories, nonfiction passages, and Reader’s Theater scripts that give students more opportunities to apply taught patterns in connected text. They can also print stories, assign them digitally, or use printable activities to reinforce practice beyond the core lesson.

For schools using programs such as CKLA, UFLI, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Benchmark, Superkids, or other structured phonics sequences, LitLab helps teachers extend practice while staying connected to the adopted scope and sequence.

That matters because aligned practice is one of the places where policy becomes real. Students do not just need more reading time. They need more reading time with texts they can actually decode using the skills they have been explicitly taught.

LitLab also gives students ways to practice those skills independently. Students can read skill-aligned stories, practice spelling, create their own decodable stories, and receive feedback after reading. These student-facing tools help turn aligned practice into something students can do again and again, while still keeping the work connected to the phonics instruction happening in the classroom.

This is the bridge schools often need: strong instructional materials as the foundation, and frequent, skill-aligned practice that helps students actually apply what they are learning.

## A strong stance on three-cueing

A strong piece of Ohio’s early literacy policy is its clarity around three-cueing.

Three-cueing is a model of reading instruction that encourages students to identify words using meaning, sentence structure, and visual cues. In practice, that can mean prompting a child to look at the picture, think about what would make sense, or use the sentence pattern to guess an unfamiliar word.

Ohio has taken a clear position against that approach by largely prohibiting materials and methods which rely on three-cueing, unless a waiver applies [3].

That policy reflects a central insight from the science of reading: beginning readers need to learn how to decode the words on the page. They should be building connections between letters, sounds, spelling patterns, and word meanings, not relying on pictures or context to guess words they have not yet learned to read.

LitLab’s oral reading fluency (ORF) platform was explicitly designed to avoid visual cues when decoding. In LitLab’s ORF mode, the student reads the text aloud before the image is shown. The image stays hidden until after the student has completed recording their read of the passage. That means the student’s audio recording is based on the text, not picture-based guessing.

![Avoiding visual cues while students read aloud](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_05_22_ohio/image1.png)


*In LitLab’s oral reading fluency mode, students read the text before seeing the image, helping ensure that progress monitoring reflects decoding rather than picture-based guessing.*

In independent practice mode, images may appear to support student engagement and comprehension. But LitLab’s progress monitoring, evaluation, and feedback workflows use oral reading fluency mode, where the image is hidden until after the student reads aloud.

That makes LitLab’s feedback workflow especially well aligned to Ohio’s policy direction. When teachers review a student recording, they are reviewing an authentic attempt to read the words on the page, not a response shaped by visual cues.

## Reading plans work best with skill-level feedback

Ohio’s early literacy system also includes structures for identifying students who need support.

Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee requires schools to identify K–3 students who are reading below grade level and provide support. Schools administer reading diagnostics early in the year, and students who are not on track receive a Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plan, often called a RIMP [4].

A reading plan should do more than document that a student needs support. It should help teachers decide what to practice next: which phonics patterns need reteaching, which students need more time with a skill, and whether students are transferring what they have learned into connected text.

LitLab Skill Maps help teachers see student progress at the skill level. As students read assigned texts, teachers can review recordings, fluency information, and progress connected to the phonics sequence. This gives teachers a more continuous view of how students are applying taught skills during reading practice.

![Skill Maps for frequent progress monitoring](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_05_22_ohio/image2.png)



## Daily practice is where Ohio’s policy vision becomes real

Ohio has built a strong early literacy policy foundation. The next step is carrying that vision into daily classroom practice.

That means giving students frequent opportunities to read decodable texts aligned to the skills they are learning through Tier 1 instruction. It also means helping teachers keep extra practice, intervention, and progress monitoring connected to the adopted curriculum.

LitLab supports that implementation work by helping teachers provide aligned reading practice, capture students reading aloud, and monitor progress at the skill level.

With LitLab, teachers can:


- Browse curriculum-aligned decodable texts
- Create custom decodables tied to specific phonics skills
- Print stories or assign them digitally
- Use oral reading fluency mode to capture students reading aloud
- Review student recordings and fluency information
- Monitor progress across skills with LitLab Skill Maps

This gives schools a practical way to connect Ohio’s policy clarity to the reading practice students experience every day.

## What Ohio schools can do next

Ohio has done much of the hard policy work. Now schools need daily routines and tools that reflect that same instructional clarity.

A practical implementation plan might include:

1. 1 - Use approved high-quality instructional materials as the source of truth.
2. 2 - Give students daily decodable practice connected to the phonics skills they have been explicitly taught.
3. 3 - Keep intervention aligned to Tier 1 instruction.
4. 4 - Use progress monitoring that requires students to read the text before seeing supporting images.
5. 5 - Monitor progress at the skill level, not only through broad benchmark or diagnostic data.
6. 6 - Use student reading data to guide reteaching, additional practice, and intervention decisions.

LitLab can help Ohio schools provide that support.

## What to do next

Here are a few ways to get started with LitLab:

- 👉 [Sign up](https://www.litlab.ai/) and try LitLab for free
- 📚 [Browse LitLab’s library](https://www.litlab.ai/gallery/v2) of curriculum-aligned decodable texts or [create your own custom decodable](https://www.litlab.ai/create)
- 🖨️ Print stories or assign them digitally to students for reading practice
- 🏫 [Learn more](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) about LitLab for schools and districts

---

## References

[1] Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). “Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert.” *Psychological Science in the Public Interest*.  

[2] Ohio Revised Code. “Section 3313.6028 | Literacy curriculum.”  
https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3313.6028

[3] Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. “Guidance on Ohio’s Prohibition on Three-Cueing.” March 2024.  
https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/English-Language-Art/Resources-for-English-Language-Arts/High-Quality-Instructional-Materials-in-English-La/Three-Cueing-Guidance-Final-March-2024.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US

[4] Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. “Third Grade Reading Guarantee.”  
https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Literacy/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee

---

*LitLab serves 5,000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It meets ESSA Tier IV evidence standards and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn more](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*

Ohio has built one of the country’s clearest early literacy policy frameworks. LitLab helps schools bring that vision into daily practice with curriculum-aligned decodables, oral reading fluency, and skill-level feedback.

How LitLab Supports Ohio’s Science of Reading Policy with Daily Classroom Practice

Through the Tennessee Literacy Success Act and Reading 360, Tennessee has made a comprehensive commitment to early literacy. The state has built a clear policy framework around foundational literacy instruction, high-quality instructional materials, universal reading screeners, family communication, teacher training, and district implementation support. Reading 360 launched with major state and federal investments to help districts, teachers, and families strengthen phonics-based reading instruction [1].

This is important work. Tennessee is not simply asking schools to “focus on reading.” The state is building the infrastructure for stronger early literacy instruction: K–5 Foundational Literacy Skills Plans, approved instructional materials, universal reading screeners three times per year in grades K–3, home literacy reports, and professional learning for educators [2].

But Tennessee’s next challenge is the same one many leading science-of-reading states now face: making sure strong policy turns into coherent, daily practice for every student.

## Tennessee has built a strong early literacy foundation

The Tennessee Literacy Success Act requires foundational literacy skills instruction to be the primary form of English language arts instruction for students in grades K–3. The state defines this instruction around evidence-based components of reading, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension [3].

Districts and public charter schools must also maintain approved Foundational Literacy Skills Plans for grades K–5. These plans include daily foundational skills instructional time, adopted instructional materials, universal reading screener selection, interventions and supports, home literacy reporting, and professional development [4].

Tennessee has also pushed districts toward high-quality instructional materials. The state’s implementation materials list approved K–5 ELA programs including Amplify CKLA, Benchmark Advance, among others. Amplify CKLA has been among the most commonly adopted options across K–5, followed by Benchmark Advance [4].

That matters because curriculum coherence is central to effective literacy implementation. When districts adopt strong Tier 1 materials, students need opportunities to practice the exact skills they are learning, not disconnected activities or texts that require them to guess at words they have not yet been taught to decode.

## Recent NAEP results show progress is still hard

Tennessee deserves credit for building a serious early literacy system. At the same time, recent NAEP results suggest that the work is far from finished.

In 2024, Tennessee fourth graders had an average NAEP reading score of 215. That was not significantly different from the national public-school average of 214, and it was not significantly different from Tennessee’s 2022 average score of 214. Thirty-two percent of Tennessee fourth graders scored at or above NAEP Proficient, which was also not significantly different from 2022 [5].

This does not mean Reading 360 is not working. In fact, Tennessee’s results look stronger when placed in the broader national context. A recent New York Times analysis of Education Scorecard data, republished by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, found that reading scores were down over the past decade in 83% of districts where data were available [6]. In the state-level reading comparison, Tennessee also shows decline, but its drop appears smaller than many other states. That may reflect, in part, the state’s sustained investment in early literacy through Reading 360 and related implementation supports.

Still, the data show there is more work to do. Tennessee has built one of the country’s stronger early literacy systems, but statewide reading outcomes have not yet improved dramatically. The next implementation question is clear: once a state has adopted strong literacy policy, strong materials, and benchmark screeners, how do schools help students get enough aligned practice and feedback between those assessment windows?

## Three times a year is necessary, but not enough

Tennessee requires districts to administer an approved universal reading screener to K–3 students three times each school year and submit those results to the state. Approved screeners include aimswebPlus, DIBELS 8th Edition, easyCBM, FastBridge/FAST, iReady with Early Reading Tasks, MAP, and STAR Early Literacy/STAR Literacy [4].

These screeners are important. They help schools identify students who may need support and create a shared structure for monitoring early literacy risk.  But benchmark screeners are still snapshots. They tell educators where students are at a few points in the year. They do not always show, day by day or week by week, whether students are successfully applying the specific phonics skills being taught in Tier 1 instruction.

That is where an instructionally-aligned practice-and-feedback layer becomes important.

Students need frequent opportunities to read texts aligned to the skills they have been explicitly taught. Teachers need to know whether students are applying those skills accurately during actual reading, not only on broad benchmark assessments. And intervention teams need a way to keep Tier 2 practice connected to Tier 1 instruction.

## Instructional coherence is the next frontier

Recent Tennessee research points in this direction: SCORE’s Knox County study found that students receiving instructionally coherent intervention made an average of 1.3 additional months of literacy growth compared with peers receiving traditional intervention. SCORE defines this as aligning intervention to Tier 1 instruction, rather than treating intervention as a separate system with separate materials and routines [7].

That finding is directly relevant to Tennessee’s early literacy strategy. The state has already invested in high-quality materials, literacy networks, foundational skills plans, and universal screeners. The next step is helping districts make every layer of practice more coherent: Tier 1 instruction, Tier 2 intervention, decodable reading, fluency practice, and progress monitoring.

## How LitLab supports Tennessee schools

For districts using programs such as CKLA, Benchmark, UFLI, Fundations, Reading Horizons, or other structured literacy materials, LitLab functions as a curriculum-aligned practice layer. Teachers can browse decodable texts, create custom decodables, print stories, or assign them digitally to students, while keeping practice connected to the phonics sequence students are learning.

This helps solve a common classroom problem: even when a school has strong core materials, teachers often need more aligned reading practice than the curriculum provides. Students may need repeated exposure to a recently taught pattern, additional fluency practice, or differentiated texts that stay connected to the same instructional goal.

LitLab also helps connect practice to feedback. As students read assigned texts, teachers can review recordings, fluency information, and skill-level progress. With LitLab Skill Maps, teachers can see how students are progressing across the curriculum sequence, helping them identify which skills may need reteaching, which students may need additional support, and when students are ready to move forward.

That means schools do not have to wait until the next benchmark window to understand how students are applying taught skills. Universal screeners remain essential, but LitLab helps add more continuous, instructionally useful feedback between those moments.

## A Tennessee example: Nashville Classical Charter School

At Nashville Classical Charter School, leaders were committed to the science of reading and prioritized decodable texts in early literacy instruction. But they found that students, especially in the lower grades, quickly ran through available decodables and began losing motivation [8].

LitLab helped the school provide personalized, curriculum-aligned decodable practice tied directly to phonics patterns being taught in Tier 1. During the pilot, teachers assigned decodable patterns weekly based on AIMSWeb and CKLA data. LitLab was used during the school’s Tier 2 intervention block while teachers worked with small groups [8].

By the end of the year, both pilot classrooms outperformed peers on end-of-year benchmarks, every student in both groups made gains in oral reading fluency, and teachers reported stronger engagement, including 15 to 20 minutes of sustained independent use [8].

The lesson is not that a single tool replaces strong instruction. It is the opposite. LitLab worked because it supported the instructional ecosystem the school had already built: strong core instruction, clear data, aligned intervention, and daily opportunities for students to practice reading successfully.

👉 [Read the Nashville Classical Charter School Case Study](https://www.litlab.ai/blog/case-study-nashville-classical-charter-school)

## What Tennessee schools can do next

Tennessee has already done much of the hard system-building work. The next step is making early literacy implementation more continuous, coherent, and actionable inside classrooms.

A practical implementation plan might include:

1. 1 - Use your high-quality instructional material as the source of truth.
2. 2 - Give students daily decodable practice connected to the skills they have been explicitly taught.
3. 3 - Keep Tier 2 intervention aligned to Tier 1 instruction.
4. 4 - Build regular routines for oral reading fluency practice and feedback.
5. 5 - Monitor progress at the skill level, not only through broad benchmark scores.
6. 6 - Use universal screeners as important checkpoints, while adding more frequent feedback between those windows.

LitLab can help Tennessee schools provide that support.

Teachers can use LitLab to browse curriculum-aligned decodables, create custom decodable texts, print or assign stories digitally, and monitor student progress across key foundational literacy skills.

## What to do next

Here are a few ways to get started with LitLab:

- 👉 [Sign up](https://www.litlab.ai/) and try LitLab for free
- 📚 [Browse LitLab’s library](https://www.litlab.ai/gallery/v2/staff/ufli) of curriculum-aligned decodable texts or [create your own custom decodable](https://www.litlab.ai/create)
- 🖨️ Print stories or assign them digitally to students for reading practice
- 🏫 [Learn more](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) about LitLab for schools and districts

---

## References

[1] Tennessee Department of Education. “Reading 360.”  
https://www.tn.gov/education/reading-360.html

[2] Tennessee Department of Education. “Foundational Literacy Skills Plans.”  
https://www.tn.gov/education/districts/instruction/foundational-literacy-skills-plan.html

[3] Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. “Tennessee Literacy Success Act.”  
https://comptroller.tn.gov/office-functions/research-and-education-accountability/prek-12-collection/literacy-success-act--lsa-.html

[4] Tennessee Department of Education. “Tennessee Literacy Success Act Implementation Report.”  
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/learning-acceleration/Tennessee_Literacy_Success_Act_Implementation_Report-Updated.pdf

[5] National Center for Education Statistics. “2024 Reading State Snapshot Report: Tennessee Grade 4.”  
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024220TN4.pdf

[6] Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline.’” May 13, 2026.  
https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/2026/05/why-us-test-scores-are-generation-long-decline

[7] SCORE. “Instructional Coherence for Literacy: Knox County Study.”  
https://tnscore.org/resources/instructional-coherence-for-literacy-knox-county-study

[8] LitLab. “Case Study: Nashville Classical Charter School.”  
https://www.litlab.ai/blog/case-study-nashville-classical-charter-school

---

*LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn More](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*

Tennessee has built one of the country’s strongest early literacy systems through Reading 360, universal screeners, and high-quality instructional materials. The next challenge is helping teachers connect daily practice, intervention, and skill-level feedback.

Tennessee’s Reading 360 Strategy: Turning Literacy Policy Into Daily Reading Practice

With the adoption of Assembly Bill 1454, California is entering a major transition in early literacy instruction by shifting away from “balanced literacy” and toward best practices grounded in the science of reading [1]. The timing is particularly important given California’s well-documented struggles with reading outcomes and literacy proficiency [2].

Districts and teachers across the state are now reevaluating their approach to foundational literacy instruction. It is not an easy shift, especially for educators who were trained for years in different instructional philosophies, but the emerging data is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: only states that adopted science-of-reading reforms showed meaningful reading gains from 2023 to 2025 [2]. California is making a difficult, but necessary, transition toward evidence-based literacy instruction.

This is not a challenge unique to California. Across the country, schools are adopting high-quality instructional materials and structured literacy curricula such as UFLI, CKLA, Fundations, Benchmark, and Reading Horizons. These programs place a stronger emphasis on explicit phonics instruction, decodable text, oral reading fluency, spelling, and progress monitoring — all key components of evidence-based reading instruction.

But this transition is about more than simply selecting a new curriculum. Successful implementation requires systems that support day-to-day classroom instruction and help students consistently practice the skills they are learning during Tier 1 instruction.

## Implementing the science of reading requires aligned daily practice

The science of reading is not a single curriculum, but a large interdisciplinary body of research on how students learn to read most effectively [3].

Research on reading development consistently emphasizes the importance of repeated exposure to taught phonics patterns. Students develop reading proficiency not only through direct instruction, but through opportunities to apply those skills across decoding, spelling, fluency, and comprehension activities.

During curriculum transitions, teachers often need additional aligned practice opportunities that reinforce the instructional sequence students are actively learning in class. This can be difficult to manage consistently across classrooms, particularly when students need differentiated levels of support.

Schools also need ways to monitor whether students are successfully applying newly taught skills during independent and guided practice. As districts implement new literacy systems, maintaining alignment between instruction, student practice, and assessment becomes increasingly important.


## LitLab was designed for this instructional context

LitLab was built to make reading practice more curriculum-aligned, differentiated, and engaging for students, directly following practices founded in the science of reading.

The platform aligns to widely used structured literacy programs including UFLI, CKLA, Fundations, and Reading Horizons, helping teachers provide reading practice connected directly to the phonics progression students are learning in the classroom.

Teachers can browse a large library of decodable texts or generate custom stories aligned to specific phonics skills and instructional sequences. **Rather than functioning separately from core instruction, LitLab is designed to reinforce and extend the literacy systems schools are already implementing.**

For districts adopting structured literacy programs, this allows teachers to provide additional reading practice without abandoning alignment to the curriculum sequence already in place.


## Supporting differentiated instruction while maintaining alignment

One of the challenges schools face during science of reading implementation is balancing differentiation with consistency. Students need varying levels of support and repeated exposure as they develop foundational reading skills, but teachers also need to maintain alignment to the core instructional sequence.

LitLab allows teachers to generate differentiated decodable practice while preserving alignment to the target phonics progression. Teachers can customize text length, vocabulary, story content, and scaffolds while remaining connected to the instructional sequence students are actively learning.

This flexibility helps educators personalize reading practice without sacrificing curriculum alignment. Students can receive additional exposure and support while still practicing the phonics patterns and decoding skills tied directly to classroom instruction.


## Connecting reading practice to instructional decision-making

LitLab combines student reading practice with ongoing mastery and fluency data designed to support instructional decision-making.

Students engage in oral reading, spelling, comprehension, and decodable reading activities tied to specific phonics skills. As students practice, teachers can monitor fluency analysis, review recordings, and view classwide skill maps connected directly to the curriculum progression.

This allows educators to identify where students may need additional reinforcement, which skills are becoming secure, and when students are ready to progress to new concepts.

By connecting reading practice to actionable instructional data, LitLab aims to help schools reduce the gap between assessment, intervention, and daily classroom instruction.


## Supporting engaging and meaningful reading experiences

Effective foundational skills practice also depends on student engagement and meaningful reading experiences.

LitLab includes customizable stories, student-created texts, oral reading activities, spelling practice, and comprehension supports designed to keep practice motivating while maintaining appropriate decodability constraints.

Students can create stories aligned to teacher-assigned phonics skills, helping increase ownership and excitement around reading practice while still reinforcing core instructional goals.

<Callout icon="📚">

**In the 2025–26 school year, students created and read over 240,000 extra stories on LitLab for additional reading practice.** Each additional moment of self-directed reading practice was aligned to the skill their teacher assigned. 

</Callout>


The goal is to help students spend more time engaged in successful reading experiences connected directly to the skills they are learning in class.

## What to do next

Here are a few ways to get started with LitLab:
- 👉 [Sign up](https://www.litlab.ai/) and try LitLab for free
- 📚 [Browse LitLab’s library](https://www.litlab.ai/gallery/v2/staff/ufli) of curriculum-aligned decodable texts or [create your own custom decodable](https://www.litlab.ai/create)
- 🖨️ Print stories or assign them digitally to students for reading practice
- 🏫 [Learn more](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) about LitLab for schools and districts

---

## References

[1] California Governor Gavin Newsom Signs AB 1454 into Law (Science of Reading / Early Literacy Reform Context)  
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/08/governor-newsom-signs-literacy-package-to-strengthen-early-reading-instruction/

[2] Harvard Graduate School of Education — New Education Scorecard Finds U-Shaped Recovery  
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/26/05/new-education-scorecard-finds-u-shaped-recovery

[3] Stanford University — How the Science of Reading Is Reshaping Literacy Education  
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/02/science-of-reading-literacy-education-legislation-research

---

*LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn More](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*



How LitLab supports California schools and districts as they shift toward evidence-based early literacy instruction.


California: Transitioning to the Science of Reading

AI tools for classrooms are arriving faster than anyone can evaluate them. Districts that spent years strengthening literacy instruction — adopting structured programs, retraining teachers, and improving curriculum alignment — are now layering AI tools on top of that foundation faster than anyone has figured out how to evaluate them.

Recently, the LitLab team joined a conversation hosted by Student Achievement Partners on exactly this issue. ([Full webinar here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEcgjsxkHLs)). In that discussion, instructional leaders and educators were asked to describe their experiences with AI in the classroom. A wide range of answers were given: "overwhelming", "disjointed", "exciting", "unregulated", "beta mode", "conflicting emotions". That range is something we hear constantly from teachers and administrators as schools are flooded with new AI tools with varying quality and curriculum alignment. 

---

## The coherence problem already existed before AI arrived

For anyone working in foundational literacy, the coherence problem isn't new. It's the same problem that arose when districts adopted strong tier-one phonics programs while simultaneously using leveled readers for independent practice. The instruction was solid, but the practice materials didn't match it. And the students who most needed practice applying taught phonics patterns were often practicing text that introduced untaught ones instead.

Research is increasingly clear that alignment is not a minor implementation detail — it meaningfully affects reading outcomes. In a randomized controlled trial in Knox County, Tennessee, students receiving tutoring aligned to their Tier 1 classroom instruction outperformed peers receiving tutoring from a different program by 0.12 standard deviations — roughly 1.3 additional months of learning — despite both groups receiving high-quality, high-dosage support. For students in the bottom 10% of performers, the effects were even larger.

The mechanism behind that gap isn't mysterious. Saha et al. (2021) found that the level of decoding difficulty in a text is a unique and significant predictor of both reading miscues and passage fluency — meaning when students encounter phonics patterns they haven't yet been taught, accuracy and fluency suffer measurably, regardless of how strong the instruction was. Practice in misaligned materials doesn't just fail to help. It actively works against what the lesson taught.

More reading practice wasn't the variable in Knox County. More *aligned* reading practice was. AI doesn't change this math. It scales it in either direction.

---

## AI as amplification vs. fragmentation

When AI is used as a curriculum amplifier, it extends the reach of the instruction a school has already invested in. It fills the practice gap with materials that are genuinely tied to a specific scope and sequence. It gives teachers data that traces back to what was taught that day, not a generic readability level. And it handles the tedious parts — materials creation, alignment checking, progress tracking — so teachers can focus their time where it matters most: working directly with students.

When AI is used without a curricular anchor, it can fragment instruction. A general-purpose decodable generator, for example, can produce beginner-friendly text, but it has no concept of a phonics scope and sequence. It doesn't know which sound-spelling correspondences your students have learned, which patterns are still ahead, or what lesson happened this morning. The result looks like a decodable, but it isn't. A text that sits at 10% decodability relative to a student's actual instructional level isn't decodable at all. It's a leveled reader in different packaging, doing exactly what the science of reading research tells us not to do.

<Callout icon="📊">

**LitLab stories average 85%+ decodability scored against the specific program a school has adopted — compared to roughly 10% for ChatGPT-generated texts scored against the same benchmark.** Across all 128 UFLI Foundations lessons, LitLab's staff-curated decodable library maintains a median decodability above 97%, with fewer than 5% of stories falling below 90%. Nearly every word a student encounters has already been taught, in the right sequence, by their teacher.

</Callout>

---

## A heuristic worth keeping

One useful frame for evaluating any AI tool: is it taking students *deeper* into your core instructional materials, or is it pulling them away from those materials?

It's not a rubric, but it's a heuristic that an instructional leader can apply quickly — in a walkthrough, a procurement conversation, or a PD session — and it cuts through a lot of noise.

This is the distinction that often gets lost in the rush to adopt more AI in reading instruction. For example, the question is not whether a tool can produce reading materials. The question is whether those materials are instructionally coherent with what students are being taught in the classroom.

---

## What this means for instructional leaders

The schools that will navigate this moment best are the ones approaching AI adoption the same way they approached curriculum adoption: with careful questions about evidence, instructional coherence, and fit — not just excitement about new features.

That means asking vendors how their tools align with your Tier 1 program. It means asking for decodability scores against your actual scope and sequence — not a generic readability level. And it means being precise about the problem the tool is solving, and whether that problem is genuinely constraining student reading growth.

The AI tools that belong in literacy classrooms are the ones built to support coherent, Science of Reading–aligned instruction. For independent early reading practice, that means being grounded in the understanding that a phonics lesson is not complete until students have practiced the taught patterns in connected text that is deeply aligned with their teacher’s scope and sequence.

---

### References

- Saha, N., Grieve, R., & Lovelock, I. (2021). Decoding difficulty as a predictor of oral reading fluency and miscues. *Reading and Writing*.
- Tennessee SCORE + Accelerate (2024–25). Knox County tutoring alignment RCT. *(Confirm full citation with Varun.)*
- Griffith, D. & Fitzpatrick, B. (April 2026). *From the Teacher's Desk: A Science of Reading Progress Report.* Thomas B. Fordham Institute. https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/teachers-desk-science-reading-progress-report

--

*LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn More](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*

AI tools are flooding literacy classrooms faster than schools can evaluate them. But more technology doesn’t automatically improve reading outcomes. Tools aligned to a school’s instruction are far more likely to support reading development. This post explores the research on curriculum alignment, how to spot AI that strengthens your phonics program rather than fragments it, and the questions instructional leaders should ask before adopting anything new.

What Instructional Leaders Should Ask Before Adopting AI for Literacy

With the Read to Succeed Act, Kentucky has set a clear goal: ensuring that all children learn to read well before exiting third grade [1]. The Kentucky Department of Education’s early literacy guidance emphasizes structured literacy, evidence-based reading instruction, and the importance of explicit, systematic teaching across the essential components of literacy.

Kentucky’s Department of Education (KDE) has offered a thoughtful and well-founded vision for early literacy. KDE’s guidance promotes strong reading instruction following a coherent scope and sequence, explicit teaching, guided practice, frequent student response, assessment, feedback, and the steady accumulation of skill over time [2]. It's about helping teachers deliver instruction and practice in ways that reflect how children actually learn to read.

KDE is also appropriately direct about what early readers do and do not need. Its guidance cautions against leveled texts that ask children to rely on pictures, sentence context, or guessing when they encounter words they cannot yet decode [4]. We strongly agree. For beginning readers, independent practice should be aligned to the phonics patterns students have been taught, giving them repeated opportunities to connect instruction to successful reading, spelling, fluency, and comprehension work.

LitLab, founded in the best practices from the literature that makes up the science of reading, fits neatly into that strategy as a practical support for implementation: aligned and coherent reading practice for developing readers.

## Structured literacy depends on aligned practice

KDE defines structured literacy as an approach that emphasizes explicit and systematic teaching of essential literacy components, including foundational skills like decoding and spelling, as well as higher-level literacy skills like reading comprehension and written expression [1].

A key part of this approach is alignment. Early readers should not be practicing disconnected skills or reading texts that require them to guess at words they have not yet been taught to decode. KDE’s guidance specifically contrasts structured literacy practices with the use of predictable or leveled texts that contain untaught phonetic patterns and encourage guessing from pictures or context [4].

For early readers, this makes decodable practice especially important. KDE’s Key Actions guidance notes that decodable texts are useful because they are restricted to spelling patterns students have been taught, giving children opportunities to read with greater accuracy and comprehension [3].

This is exactly the implementation gap many districts face: once a district has selected a strong instructional resource, how do teachers consistently provide enough aligned reading practice for students every day?

## LitLab was designed for this instructional context

LitLab helps Kentucky schools turn structured literacy goals into daily classroom practice.

The platform gives teachers access to curriculum-aligned decodable texts and custom decodable creation tools that connect directly to the phonics skills students are learning. Instead of asking teachers to search for supplemental materials or create practice from scratch, LitLab helps them provide additional reading opportunities that stay aligned to the instructional sequence already in place.

For districts using structured literacy programs such as UFLI, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Benchmark, or Superkids, LitLab functions as a practice layer that reinforces the curriculum rather than replacing it.

Teachers can browse LitLab’s decodable library, create custom decodables, print stories, or assign them digitally to students. This helps students spend more time practicing the exact skills they are learning during Tier 1 instruction.

## Supporting differentiation without losing alignment

One challenge in structured literacy implementation is balancing consistency with differentiation.

Students need different levels of support, but teachers still need practice materials to remain connected to the core scope and sequence. LitLab allows teachers to adjust story length, content, vocabulary, and reading format while keeping practice aligned to the target phonics pattern.

This helps teachers meet students where they are without drifting into disconnected practice.

A student who needs more exposure to a recently taught pattern can receive additional decodable reading practice. A student ready for more challenge can read a longer or more complex text using the same target skill. In both cases, practice remains connected to the instructional goal.

## Connecting fluency practice to instructional feedback

KDE’s guidance emphasizes that fluency cannot be treated as an isolated skill. Students first need strong decoding skills, then opportunities to practice reading text accurately and repeatedly, with feedback [3]. Structured literacy implementation also depends on knowing whether students are successfully applying what they have been taught. KDE’s guidance emphasizes frequent assessment, progress monitoring, and corrective feedback as part of effective instruction [1].

LitLab supports this instructional cycle by connecting decodable reading practice, oral reading fluency, and skill-level progress monitoring. Students read assigned texts aloud, and teachers can review student recordings, fluency information, and progress tied to specific phonics skills. With Litlab, teachers' don't have to wait until the next end-of-year iReady or DIBELS screener. Instead, progress monitoring & feedback is available to teachers each time a student records themselves reading on LitLab.

With LitLab Skill Maps, teachers can also see how students are progressing across the curriculum sequence. This helps educators identify which skills may need reteaching, which students may need additional support, and when students are ready to move forward.

For schools and districts, this creates a coherent and rapid feedback system: curriculum-aligned instruction, aligned student practice, oral reading fluency practice, and actionable information about student progress.

## Making reading practice successful and motivating

Effective early literacy practice should also feel successful for students.

When students are asked to read texts filled with patterns they have not learned, they are often forced to guess. When students read decodable texts connected to their instruction, they are more likely to experience accuracy, confidence, and momentum.

LitLab gives students opportunities to engage with decodable stories that are aligned to teacher-assigned skills while still feeling meaningful and motivating. Students can read teacher-assigned texts, practice fluency, and even create their own stories connected to the skills their teacher has selected.

<Callout icon="📚">

In the 2025–26 school year, students created and read over 240,000 extra stories on LitLab for additional reading practice. Each additional moment of self-directed reading practice was aligned to the skill their teacher assigned.

</Callout>

## What Kentucky schools can do next

As Kentucky districts continue strengthening early literacy instruction, the next step is making sure classroom practice stays aligned to structured literacy goals.

A practical implementation plan might include:

1. 1 - Use your high-quality instructional resource as the source of truth. 
2. 2 - Give students decodable practice connected to the skills they have been explicitly taught.
3. 3 - Build regular routines for oral reading fluency practice and feedback.
4. 4 - Monitor student progress at the skill level, not just through broad benchmark scores.
5. 5 - Support teachers with tools that make aligned practice easier to deliver consistently.

LitLab can help Kentucky schools provide that support.

Teachers can use LitLab to browse curriculum-aligned decodables, create custom decodable texts, print or assign them digitally to students, and monitor student progress across key foundational literacy skills.

## What to do next

Here are a few ways to get started with LitLab:

- 👉 [Sign up](https://www.litlab.ai/) and try LitLab for free
- 📚 [Browse LitLab’s library](https://www.litlab.ai/gallery/v2/staff/ufli) of curriculum-aligned decodable texts or [create your own custom decodable](https://www.litlab.ai/create)
- 🖨️ Print stories or assign them digitally to students for reading practice
- 🏫 [Learn more](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) about LitLab for schools and districts

---

## References

[1] Kentucky Department of Education. “Structured Literacy.” Published April 17, 2026.  
https://www.education.ky.gov/curriculum/EarlyLiteracy/Pages/structured_literacy.aspx

[2] Kentucky Department of Education. “Structured Literacy: An Approach Grounded in the Science of Reading.”  
https://www.education.ky.gov/curriculum/EarlyLiteracy/Documents/Structured_Literacy_Grounded_in_the_Science_of_Reading.pdf

[3] Kentucky Department of Education. “Key Actions for Meeting the Needs of All K–3 Readers and Writers.”  
https://www.education.ky.gov/curriculum/EarlyLiteracy/Documents/Key_Actions_for_Meeting_the_Needs_of_All_K-3_Readers_and_Writers.pdf

[4] Kentucky Department of Education. “Typical Literacy Practices Versus Structured Literacy Practices.”  
https://www.education.ky.gov/curriculum/EarlyLiteracy/Documents/Typical_Literacy_Practices_Versus_Structured_Literacy_Practices.pdf

[5] Kentucky Department of Education. “Why the Three-Cueing Model Hinders Reading Proficiency.”  
https://www.education.ky.gov/curriculum/EarlyLiteracy/Documents/Why_the_Three-Cueing_Method_Hinders_Reading_Proficiency.pdf


---

*LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn More](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*

How LitLab supports Kentucky schools and districts as they strengthen structured literacy implementation in K–3 classrooms.

Kentucky’s Early Literacy Strategy: Turning Structured Literacy Into Daily Reading Practice

**Johnsburg CUSD 12 · Johnsburg, Illinois**

Ringwood Primary School, a public elementary school, used LitLab’s curriculum-aligned decodable texts to close the gap between phonics instruction and fluent, independent reading.

![Ringwood Case Study at a glance](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_4_16_ringwood_case_study/image1.png)

[**👉 Read the full case study here**](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/Shareables/LitLab_Ringwood_case_study.pdf)

## 2025–26 School Year

Ringwood Primary School, part of Johnsburg Community Unit School District 12 in Johnsburg, Illinois, serves approximately 300 students across grades K–2.

Like many schools implementing structured literacy, Ringwood’s educators had adopted UFLI Foundations as their core phonics curriculum, but they faced a persistent gap: students were learning phonics skills in isolation and struggling to translate that into fluent reading.

In the 2025–26 school year, Ringwood partnered with LitLab to provide teachers with curriculum-aligned decodable texts that directly reinforce UFLI lesson objectives.

After one semester of implementation, a comprehensive survey of 20 educators revealed striking results across every dimension measured: student skills, teacher satisfaction, and instructional alignment.

This case study presents the full picture of Ringwood’s implementation: the challenge, rollout strategy, measured impact, and teacher feedback.

---

## Results at a Glance

![Ringwood Case Study Results Survey Graphic](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_4_16_ringwood_case_study/image2.png)

## The Challenge: Phonics Skills Without Transfer

Ringwood’s instructional leaders identified a familiar pattern: students performed well during explicit phonics instruction but struggled to apply those skills when reading connected text.

The gap between “knowing the sounds” and “reading fluently” was persistent across grade levels.

![Director of Curriculum and Instruction reading impact quote](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_4_16_ringwood_case_study/image3.png)

This is a well-documented challenge in structured literacy implementation. Phonics instruction
teaches students to decode individual words, but the transfer to fluent reading requires extensive
practice with texts that are well-aligned to instruction. Without that bridge, students develop
decoding strategies but struggle to translate it into fluent, automatic reading.

Ringwood needed decodable texts tightly aligned to their specific phonics programs’ scope and
sequence, not decodables aligned to a different phonics program. And they needed students to
actively practice reading aloud those decodables so that they could apply exactly what they’d just
been taught.

---

## The Solution: Curriculum-Aligned Reading Practice

LitLab stood out to Ringwood’s leadership because of its direct, lesson-level alignment to Ringwood’s chosen phonics program, UFLI Foundations. Rather than offering a generic library of decodable texts, LitLab maps every story to specific UFLI lessons, ensuring that students encounter only phonics patterns they have already been taught. This tight curriculum alignment was the decisive factor in adoption.

> “The decodables were able to focus on the UFLI skill of the week… it has strong decodability rather than students being introduced to words they have not been taught to decode yet.”  
> — Dawn Barrett

Beyond alignment, LitLab provided Ringwood teachers with tools to personalize and differentiate instruction. The custom story generator allowed teachers to create decodables featuring student names and interests, a feature that Dawn specifically credited with boosting engagement. The digital student practice mode gave students the ability to read independently on Chromebooks and iPads. And the platform’s print-ready formats made it easy for teachers to send decodable texts home for additional practice.

Critically, 95% of surveyed teachers agreed that LitLab saves them time finding high-quality instructional materials. Time that was previously spent searching for decodables that matched their scope and sequence, often unsuccessfully, was able to be repurposed and put towards students.

## Lightweight Rollout, Wide Classroom Impact

Dawn championed a thoughtful approach for Ringwood’s rollout to best fit their small district size while minimizing disruption and building internal expertise. LitLab offered Ringwood a virtual onboarding at the beginning of the school year. Dawn prioritized this training for Ringwood’s two MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) leaders. These leaders became the school’s resident LitLab experts, and brought LitLab to their teaching staff.

This lightweight approach worked. Ringwood’s teachers reported high ease of use across all dimensions, with 95% of teachers saying that it was easy to find stories, and 85% reporting that it was easy to assign practice aligned to their curriculum

## Flexible Use Across Grade Levels and Settings

One of the most notable findings from Ringwood’s implementation is how naturally teachers adapted LitLab to different instructional contexts across the foundational literacy continuum:


👉 **Second Grade:** Teachers used LitLab decodables primarily as independent center work, giving students the autonomy to read curriculum-aligned texts on their own during literacy rotations.

👉 **Kindergarten and First Grade:** Teachers used LitLab in small-group instruction, reading decodables together with students in guided contexts to scaffold fluency development.

👉 **SPED, Title I, and MTSS:** Specialists used LitLab to supplement intervention sessions. One SPED resource teacher noted that she gives students choices among several LitLab books and that “they like having control over that portion,” building agency alongside skills.

👉 **Multilingual Learners:** Ringwood’s ML teacher reported that her students “are always asking
me to print off more books for them to practice at home,” a strong signal that the texts are accessible and engaging even for students navigating a new language.

👉 **Home Practice:** Multiple teachers reported sending LitLab decodables home with students, extending practice beyond the school day. One first-grade teacher shared that her “students love the decodables and share they practice them often at home.”


---

## Impact: Stronger Student Outcomes and Actionable Data

Teachers reported impact across six dimensions:

| Student Outcome | % Agree |
|----------------|--------|
| Develop stronger phonics and decoding skills | 100% |
| Improve performance on UFLI-based weekly assessments | 94% |
| Stay engaged with reading practice | 90% |
| Build confidence and agency as readers | 90% |
| Improve reading fluency and accuracy | 85% |
| Increase reading comprehension | 80% |

Teachers are seeing LitLab’s impact show up directly on the assessments they already trust. With 94% agreeing that students improved on UFLI-based weekly assessments, the gains are visible in the same formative measures Ringwood uses to track phonics progress.

That assessment signal is reinforced by a broader instructional shift. 100% of teachers agreed that LitLab developed stronger phonics and decoding skills, which supports LitLab’s role in helping students move beyond isolated skill work into real reading.

---

## Student Data That Is Actually Actionable
Teachers were also asked how well LitLab delivers on its core promises to educators. The results confirm strong alignment with instructional priorities:

| Value Proposition | % Agree |
|------------------|--------|
| Content aligns well with our core phonics curriculum | 95% |
| Saves me time finding high-quality instructional material | 95% |
| Supports differentiation in foundational literacy | 95% |
| Improves the quality of student independent practice | 94% |
| Student data helps me monitor and respond to student needs | 92% |

The strongest signal here is how consistently teachers point to data as actionable, not just informative. With 92% agreeing that student data helps them monitor and respond to needs, LitLab isn’t just surfacing progress, it’s tightening the feedback loop between practice and instruction. Teachers can see skill-level performance tied directly to phonics patterns and immediately adjust grouping, pacing, or intervention without needing to triangulate across multiple tools. That shifts data from something retrospective to something operational, embedded in daily instructional decisions rather than reviewed after the fact.

## In Their Own Words: Teacher Perspectives
Teachers were also asked how well LitLab delivers on its core promises to educators. The results confirm strong alignment with instructional priorities:

> “LitLab is a great resource for independent practice with UFLI skills. They are also great books to print and send home.”  
> — 1st Grade Teacher  

> “My students love the decodables. They practice them often at home.”  
> — 1st Grade Teacher  

> “The students seem to really enjoy the books… My ML students are always asking for more.”  
> — ML Teacher  

> “Students are engaged… they like having control over their reading choices.”  
> — SPED Resource Teacher  

> “It’s a great program to practice phonics skills independently.”  
> — 2nd Grade Teacher  

---

## Looking Ahead

Ringwood Primary’s experience demonstrates what happens when practice is tightly aligned to a school’s phonics scope and sequence: students transfer skills from instruction to reading, teachers save time and trust the materials, and the gap between “learning phonics” and “reading fluently” begins to close. Every teacher surveyed agreed that LitLab strengthens students’ decoding skills. Teachers across every role — gen ed, SPED, Title I, MTSS, and multilingual learner — found ways to integrate the platform into their instruction. And students are not just building decoding and fluency skills; they’re building confidence, independence, and a genuine love for reading.

## Methodology

Data collected via online survey administered January 2026 after one semester of LitLab implementation. Twenty (20) respondents across grades K–2, including classroom teachers, SPED resource teachers, a Title I reading teacher, MTSS specialists, a multilingual learner teacher, and a student teacher. Student outcomes and value propositions measured on a Likert agreement scale. Behavioral observations were multi-select. Ease of use measured on a four-point scale. Open- ended responses from site lead collected via structured interview.

See how Ringwood Primary used curriculum-aligned decodables to improve fluency, engagement, and decoding skills in just one semester.

Case Study: Ringwood Primary School

There's a lot of AI in EdTech right now. Some of it is genuinely exciting. Some of it is a chatbot with a reading skin on top — content that isn't actually tied to a curriculum, a scope and sequence, or what a teacher taught that morning.  As a provider of educational materials that are intended to be used by early learners, it's critically important to be transparent about how AI is used and incorporated into educational materials. 

So, how does LitLab use AI? What's our philosophy?

The short version: We build tools that leverage emerging AI to handle the tedious parts: materials creation, curriculum alignment, and data analysis. Teachers get their time back and students get better-aligned practice. Teachers stay in control of the materials and instructional goals. Students never interact with a general-purpose AI. Every AI decision we make runs through one filter: does this actually serve the student's reading development?

That perspective comes directly from what the Science of Reading tells us about how young children learn to read.


## Coherence Is the Standard

The Science of Reading is a growing body of evidence about how children learn to read. That research points consistently to reading growth being supported by a systematic process — one where phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension build on each other in a predictable sequence. Effective instruction follows that sequence explicitly, and practice needs to reinforce exactly what instruction has taught.

That alignment is what makes practice work. Research shows a 19% greater efficacy delta for aligned practice in Tier 1 instruction, and 27% in Tier 2 intervention. More practice isn't inherently better. More *aligned* practice is.

This is what makes AI tricky in early literacy. A tool that generates reading content without enforcing scope and sequence doesn't just fall short, it actively works against the coherence that structured literacy depends on. Every minute a student spends on content that doesn't match what they've been taught is a minute that isn't reinforcing the lesson.

Word recognition and phoneme sensitivity are among the strongest predictors of early reading development \[3\]. Decoding and oral language skills independently predict reading comprehension as early as second grade \[2\]. The stakes are real: students who don't read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma \[1\].

Getting early literacy right matters. And that means getting the tools right, too.



## The Problem with Most AI Decodable Generators

General-purpose AI, including tools that market themselves as decodable generators, can produce beginner-friendly text. What they can't do is enforce a phonics progression. They don't track which sound-spelling correspondences a student has been taught. They don't control for irregular words or patterns beyond a student's instructional level. They don't know what lesson happened this morning.

Decodability measures the percentage of words in a text that a student can decode using only the phonics patterns they've been explicitly taught — according to their specific scope and sequence. A word that's decodable in UFLI Foundations at lesson 40 might not be decodable in Fundations at the same point. True decodability isn't a fixed property of a text. It depends entirely on what a student has been taught, and when.

That's what makes most AI-generated content fall short. General-purpose AI has no concept of a scope and sequence. It can't know which sound-spelling correspondences your students have learned, which patterns are still ahead, or which words need to be pre-taught. The result looks like a decodable but isn't.

LitLab stories average 85%+ decodability, scored against the specific program a school has adopted. Nearly every word a student encounters has already been taught, in the right sequence, by their teacher. ChatGPT-generated texts, by comparison, score around 10%.

That gap matters. It isn't a leveled reader either. It's just words — with no verified skill alignment, no reliable Lexile, no A-Z level. It looks like instructional material and isn't. This is exactly the kind of incoherence that the Science of Reading asks us to move away from.



## How We Use AI at LitLab

LitLab uses AI across four areas: generating decodable content, extending aligned practice to students, enabling accessibility (e.g. text to speech), and analyzing oral reading fluency. In every case, the AI works within strict curriculum constraints. Teachers stay in control. Students never interact with a general-purpose AI.

### Custom Decodable Generators

LitLab's [decodable generators](https://www.litlab.ai/create) are built on a proprietary Scope & Sequence Alignment system. Teachers can generate three types of content: fiction stories, nonfiction passages, and reader's theater scripts designed for partner or group reading. Every format is phonics-aligned to the same scope and sequence — so the skill focus stays consistent whether students are reading independently or performing with a partner.

Every generated decodable is bound by a specific phonics skill focus, controlled vocabulary lists drawn from the teacher's chosen program, and age-appropriate content parameters.

When a teacher generates a decodable, the AI produces a draft. The teacher reviews it, edits if needed, and decides whether to assign it. Finding the right decodable text used to mean endless searching for something that came close enough to the lesson — LitLab handles that heavy lifting, so teachers can create and assign curriculum-aligned stories directly, confident that every text reinforces exactly what they taught. 

Teachers can assign decodables digitally or print them for hands-on reading. Five print formats are available (single image, read and draw, fully illustrated, compact story sheet, and booklet) so teachers can use them in the way that best fits their classroom.

LitLab also maintains a library of 1,500+ pre-made grab-and-go decodables, each built by literacy specialists and reviewed before publication. AI-generated and human-reviewed content work together within the same alignment system.

### Student-Initiated Practice: Aligned Reading, On Demand

One of the hardest problems in early literacy isn't the whole-group lesson — it's what happens after it. Students who finish early, students who want to reread, students who need more repetitions with a specific skill before it clicks. Teachers can't generate new decodable material on demand for every student who needs it. Until recently, that meant reaching for whatever was on the shelf, which often meant reaching for something misaligned.

LitLab lets students generate their own decodable stories, but only within the exact same curriculum constraints their teacher already set.

When a student requests a new story, the system doesn't open a general-purpose AI and let them ask for anything. It reads the skill focus and scope and sequence from their active assignment and generates a new, original story within those same bounds. The phonics patterns are the same. The controlled vocabulary list is the same. The instructional level is the same. The only thing that changes is the story itself.

![Student interface for skill and Scope-and-sequence alignment in the decodable generator](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2026_03_06_ai_science_of_reading/image1.png)

To make the student-initiated generation safe and improve accessibility, we significantly constrain the student interface. There is no text input, no open field, no prompt. Students can make three visual choices: a character, a name, and a setting — from curated, age-appropriate options presented as picture cards. That's the full extent of their input. The rest of the prompt is fixed by the system, and the curriculum constraint is always present. There is no way for a student to ask the AI anything.

This matters because in structured literacy, encountering the same phonics patterns across different texts builds the automaticity that fluency depends on. The Science of Reading is clear that massed, varied practice with high-decodability text accelerates pattern recognition in ways that a single exposure can't. The student decodable generator enables additional reading practice at the skill level the teacher has assigned for reading practice. In the 25-26 school year, students on LitLab have read over 240,000 additional stories created by themselves! Teachers regularly report it as one of their students' favorite moments in the platform.

Teachers retain full visibility. Student-generated stories appear in the same assignment view, and fluency recordings from those sessions feed back into the same skill-level data teachers already use. Nothing about the data model changes — the fluency practice simply has more surface area.

This is what curriculum-aligned AI practice should look like: not a chatbot, not a leveled reader dispenser, but a system that extends a teacher's instructional intent into the moments between lessons.

### AI Fluency Analysis

When students read aloud in LitLab, their recordings are analyzed at the word and phoneme level. The platform surfaces accuracy data, comprehension scores, and reading rate — all mapped back to the specific skills in the teacher's scope and sequence through LitLab's Skill Maps.

Teachers can listen to every recording. They can validate or overwrite any automated analysis. Student recordings are processed for reading analysis only. They are not used by LitLab or by any of our AI vendors to train, fine-tune, or improve machine learning models. Our vendor agreements explicitly prohibit this.

AI surfaces the information. The teacher decides what to do with it.

### What AI Doesn't Do at LitLab

- **Students never interact with a general-purpose AI.** LitLab is not a chatbot, and student-facing story creation involves no text input of any kind. Students make three visual choices — a character, a name, and a setting — from curated, age-appropriate options. That's it. The rest of the prompt is fixed by the system, and the curriculum constraint is always present. There is no way for a student to ask the AI anything.
- **Student data is never used to train AI models.** Our vendor agreements explicitly prohibit this.
- **All AI-generated content is constrained by curriculum.** Always.

---

\[1\] Hernandez, D.J. (2011). *Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation.* The Annie E. Casey Foundation. [https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED518818.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED518818.pdf)

\[2\] Kendeou, P., van den Broek, P., White, M.J., & Lynch, J.S. (2009). Predicting reading comprehension in early elementary school: The independent contributions of oral language and decoding skills. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 101*(4), 765–778.

\[3\] Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M.J., & Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, Rimes, Vocabulary, and Grammatical Skills as Foundations of Early Reading Development: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study. *Developmental Psychology, 40*(5), 665–681.

AI is everywhere in edtech — but not all of it belongs in an early literacy classroom. Here's how LitLab uses emerging AI to support the Science of Reading, and the principles that keep teachers in control.

AI and the Science of Reading

A pattern is emerging across schools transitioning to the Science of Reading: students pass phonics assessments but stall when reading connected text.

> "Our kids are doing well on skills in isolation — but they freeze up when you put them in front of connected text. They've learned the parts of a bike but never actually practiced riding one."  
> — Literacy Director, mid-sized district in Illinois

> "We had plenty of decodables, but when I actually looked at what kids were reading during centers, it had nothing to do with what their teacher had taught that week."    
> — Curriculum Coordinator, K–8 school in New York

The gap tends to surface during a classroom walkthrough, a coaching visit, or a data meeting where the numbers don't quite tell the story you expected. Students have been assessed, and the phonics data looks solid. They're moving through the scope and sequence. Teachers have been trained on the program. And then an adult sits down with a first or second grader and asks them to read a passage aloud — and what comes back is slow, effortful, word-by-word reading that doesn't resemble fluency at all.

The phonics instruction is doing what it's supposed to do, but something still isn't quite working for your students.


## The Difference Between Decoding a Word and Reading Fluently

Decoding and reading fluency are related but not the same skill. Decoding is what happens when a student applies a phonics rule to work out an unfamiliar word. They see a word, say the sounds, blend them, and arrive at the word. Decoding requires conscious effort and attentional resources. Fluency is what happens once a word has been encountered enough times that recognition becomes automatic — the student sees a word and can retrieve it instantly. When word recognition is automatic, cognitive resources are freed up for what reading is actually for: making meaning from text.

The path from decoding to automaticity runs through practice: repeated exposure to words and patterns in connected text, at the right level of difficulty, often enough that recognition stops requiring effort. Research puts the number of exposures needed to consolidate a new phonics pattern at 4–6. Most classrooms provide 1–2 during instruction. The rest has to come from somewhere, and in most schools, that gap simply doesn't get filled.

What tends to happen instead is this. A teacher delivers an explicit, well-structured phonics lesson. Students practice the skill in isolation — sorting pictures, reading word cards, writing words. Then they move to independent reading, centers, or small-group work, and the texts they practice with aren't tied to the lesson that just happened. They might be leveled readers left over from before the SoR transition, decodables from a bin that hasn't been sorted by skill, or passages from a supplemental program that follows a different scope and sequence. Practice is happening, but it's not reinforcing what the instruction taught. The connection between the lesson and the reading is loose, and sometimes it isn't there at all.

This is what literacy researchers and curriculum designers sometimes call the coherence problem. Instruction, practice, and assessment are operating in parallel rather than as a connected system — and the students who feel that disconnection most acutely are typically the ones who most need coherence to stick.


## Why Aligned Practice Is Harder to Provide Than It Sounds

Most teachers understand this problem instinctively. They know their students need more connected-text reading that's tied to what they've been teaching. The obstacle isn't awareness. It's materials — specifically, the absence of an unlimited, always-ready supply of connected texts matched to each lesson in the scope and sequence, at varying difficulty levels, appropriate for students at different levels in the same classroom.

Phonics programs are instruction systems. They provide the what and the when of phonics teaching. But oftentimes they don't include a scalable practice layer — enough curriculum-aligned decodable texts for every student to get meaningful reading time at their current skill level, with data showing whether that practice is working.

So teachers do what they need to do: they search, print, and improvise. Some schools have built good decodable libraries. But even well-resourced programs run thin when you account for the range of skill levels within a single classroom, the pace at which students move through a scope and sequence, and the sheer volume of reading repetitions needed to build automaticity.

The research on what alignment actually buys is now cleaner than it's ever been. A randomized controlled trial in Knox County, Tennessee (Tennessee SCORE + Accelerate, 2024–25) tested the question: Does it matter whether tutoring materials align with the student's Tier 1 classroom program? Both groups received high-quality, high-dosage tutoring. The only variable was alignment. Students with aligned materials outperformed the control group by 0.12 standard deviations, equivalent to 1.3 additional months of learning. The effects were even stronger for students in the bottom 10% of performers.

More reading practice isn't inherently better. More *aligned* reading practice is better. That distinction matters enormously when you're making decisions about how students spend instructional time.

The core phonics program a district has invested in is probably working. What it doesn't include is a scalable practice & evaluation layer — and that's exactly what LitLab provides.

## What Coherent Fluency Practice Actually Requires

When districts examine the fluency gap closely, three things tend to be missing at once.

The first is texts that are genuinely decodable at the student's current instructional level. Decodability isn't a fixed property of a piece of text — it's a relationship between the text and what a specific student has been taught. A story that's 90% decodable for a student in UFLI Lesson 45 might be far less decodable for a student in Lesson 28, even if the text looks "easy." Many libraries are organized by reading level or Lexile, not by specific lessons in the scope and sequence, which means the teacher has to do the alignment work manually or assign texts that don't match what students know.

LitLab's library of 1,500+ decodable stories and its AI-powered story generator are built around a scope and sequence alignment engine that spans UFLI, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Benchmark, Superkids, and other major programs. Every story carries a decodability score calculated against the specific program a school uses: the percentage of words that a student at a given lesson can decode using only the patterns they've been taught. LitLab stories average 85%+ decodability against the assigned program. For comparison, texts generated by general-purpose AI tools typically score around 10% — they look like decodables but are functionally leveled readers, which ask students to guess, memorize, or skip unfamiliar words rather than decode them.

[👉 Learn more about AI and the Science of Reading here](https://www.litlab.ai/blog/ai-and-the-science-of-reading-how-litlab-integrates-emerging-tech-with-rigorous-reading-practice)

The second thing missing in many classrooms is simply enough repetition. Automaticity requires encountering the same patterns across many different texts, in varied contexts, enough times that recognition no longer requires conscious effort. This is difficult when only a handful of decodables are available at a given skill level. When the bins run out, aligned practice stops. LitLab's generator means the supply of appropriately aligned texts is effectively unlimited — teachers can generate new stories tied to a specific skill, with custom keywords, in fiction or nonfiction formats, and assign or print them immediately. Students can also generate their own stories at their assigned skill level, choosing characters and settings, which tends to produce more reading motivation than a fixed library alone can sustain.

<Callout icon="📚">

**In the 2025–26 school year, students created and read over 240,000 extra stories on LitLab for additional reading practice.** Each additional moment of self-directed reading practice was aligned to the skill their teacher assigned. 

</Callout>

The third missing piece is skill-level data generated from actual reading — not quarterly benchmarks, but evidence from daily practice. When a student reads aloud in LitLab, their recording is analyzed at the word and phoneme level. The platform surfaces accuracy, reading rate, and comprehension scores, all mapped back to the skills in the teacher's scope and sequence. Teachers can listen to any recording, review the analysis, and see at a glance which students are consolidating a skill, which are ready to move forward, and which are still making consistent errors on specific patterns. That information feeds directly back into instructional decisions, and it's available the next day, not six weeks later.

For English learners and multilingual students, who often carry a heavier cognitive load during reading practice, LitLab offers Spanish-language directions and comprehension questions to reduce interference and keep the focus on the reading itself.


## Coherence as a Design Principle

The fluency gap that district leaders are seeing — students who decode but don't read smoothly — is not primarily a teaching problem. It's a systems problem. Instruction is happening. Practice is happening. But because the practice isn't tightly coupled to the instruction, the repetitions students are getting aren't building toward automaticity as efficiently as they should be.

Closing that gap requires the different parts of the literacy program to function as a coherent system: practice tied to what was taught, data generated from practice in a format that's instructionally useful, and instructional response informed by that data on a short enough cycle to matter. That's the design principle behind LitLab — not to add another layer to what teachers are already managing, but to close the loop between phonics instruction and fluent reading.

Students who are working hard in phonics lessons and still reading haltingly from connected text aren't failing to learn. They're waiting for enough of the right kind of practice. The question for school and district leaders is whether the infrastructure is in place to give them that practice at the right level, in enough volume, starting tomorrow.

---

*LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. [👉 Learn More](https://www.litlab.ai/schools) to see how it fits with your current program.*

Learn how LitLab bridges the gap between phonics instruction and fluency practice through coherent, curriculum-aligned reading practice grounded in the Science of Reading.

Why Students Can Decode But Struggle to Read Fluently

When it comes to early reading instruction, not all decodables are created equal.

A great decodable text is intentionally crafted so that the _vast majority of words_ align with what students have been explicitly taught, allowing them to successfully sound out and apply new phonics knowledge in context.

Below, we'll unpack the key features of a high-quality decodable using a LitLab story aligned to **UFLI Lesson 13 (/d/):** [Dot and Dad](https://www.litlab.ai/library/cm6fbp55n000hqobkwoxvznqv?sequence=ufli&ref=gallery_item_staff_pick)**.**

### Aligned to a Phonics Sequence

Every strong decodable text is anchored to a systematic phonics scope and sequence, such as **UFLI Foundations** or **CKLA**, ensuring that the words students encounter can be sounded out using previously taught patterns.

For example, if students have learned short vowel sounds and the letters _d_ and _t_, a sentence like _"Dad did it!"_ allows them to apply those skills successfully. This alignment gives students the structure they need to read independently and confidently, without guessing.

Research shows that the **degree of decodability** in a text strongly predicts both _reading accuracy and fluency_. In a large-scale study, **Saha et al. (2021)** found that text decodability uniquely predicted students' oral reading performance, even after accounting for decoding ability.

Across thousands of LitLab stories:

-   **Median decodability:** 96%
-   **All decodables** are aligned to a specific lesson in a phonics scope and sequence (from early CVC to vowel teams)

This tight alignment helps students apply new sound–spelling patterns without encountering untaught ones. Every LitLab story is fully aligned to a phonics sequence, ensuring that most words can be successfully sounded out.

![Example of aligned decodable text 1](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_15_great_decodable/body_fig1.png)

![Example of aligned decodable text 2](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_15_great_decodable/body_fig2.png)

### Focuses on a Target Skill — with Natural Repetition

A hallmark of great decodables is the **intentional density of skill words**.

Decodables should provide natural, frequent exposure to the target phonics pattern being practiced.

For example, if the lesson focuses on **\-ck**, the story might include several words like _duck_, _chuck_, and _tuck_. This repetition gives students multiple chances to apply the same phonics feature in varied contexts, building automaticity without sacrificing story flow.

The best decodables weave these repetitions seamlessly into engaging sentences, so practice feels like _real reading_, not drill.

### Non-Decodable Words Are Pre-Taught

Even the most controlled stories include a few words that can't yet be sounded out — such as _is_ or _the_ (often called **Heart Words**).

Most of the time, these are high-frequency words that have already been explicitly taught within the scope and sequence.

These words should be practiced _before reading_ so they don't interrupt decoding flow.

Pre-teaching them ensures that students can focus on applying the target phonics skill while still experiencing authentic, meaningful text.

![Pre-teaching example](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_15_great_decodable/body_fig3.png)

![Picture supports comprehension](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_15_great_decodable/body_fig4.png)

### Pictures Enhance the Narrative

In well-crafted decodable texts, illustrations **enhance comprehension without replacing decoding**.

Pictures help students connect meaning to the words they're reading and stay engaged, especially when a story includes new or conceptually rich details.

In the LitLab example above, students can decode the word _"it"_ and use the illustration to infer that _"it"_ refers to the jar. The word "_jar_" may not yet be decodable at early levels, so it is not included in the text. The image provides helpful context without serving as a guessing cue.

### Balanced, Engaging, and Teacher-Friendly

A high-quality decodable doesn't just support students. It supports _teachers_, too.

Beyond maintaining strong phonics control (typically **85–95% decodable**) and telling stories that make sense, great decodables make their structure transparent to the teacher.

Teachers should be able to easily see:

-   **Target skill words** — words that include the phonics pattern being practiced (e.g., _duck, pack, back_ for the **\-ck** skill)
-   **Non-decodable "story words"** — words not yet fully decodable but necessary for meaning
-   **High-frequency words** — previously taught sight words that reappear for fluency and familiarity

Clear categorization helps teachers preview texts, plan instruction, and pre-teach strategically, ensuring every story aligns with what's been taught.

**In LitLab,** each story clearly labels its target skill and categorizes all words by skill words, review words, high-frequency words, and non-decodable ("story") words. Teachers know exactly what students will encounter before reading.

This transparency keeps instruction consistent and empowers teachers to use decodables as both a reading and teaching tool, not just a text to hand out.

## Ready to Explore High-Quality Decodables?

A great decodable is more than controlled text. It's _purposeful practice_ that builds confident readers.

At **LitLab**, that balance is built in. Every story is:

-   Aligned to a phonics scope and sequence
-   Verified for decodability
-   Tagged with skill words, high-frequency words, and story words
-   Designed to make phonics practice both _accurate_ and _joyful_

By combining phonics precision, clear teacher supports, and engaging stories, LitLab makes it easy to choose texts that truly match instruction.

👉 **Explore high-quality decodable stories at [LitLab.ai](https://litlab.ai)**

_Written by: Drew McCann, K-3 Literacy Specialist and Head of Learning at LitLab.ai, and Jacqueline Ontell, Elementary Teacher, Special Education & Curriculum Development_

* * *

\[1\] Saha, N. M., Cutting, L. E., Del Tufo, S. N., & Bailey, S. (2021). Initial validation of a measure of decoding difficulty as a unique predictor of miscues and passage reading fluency. _Scientific Studies of Reading_, _25_(5), 404–418. [https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2020.1817093](https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2020.1817093)

Learn the key features of high-quality decodable texts that support student reading success and teacher effectiveness.

What makes a great decodable text?

LitLab was built to make high-quality decodable reading practice effortless for teachers, and that begins with aligning to the phonics instruction schools already trust. For many classrooms, that foundation is **UFLI Foundations**, a research-based phonics program grounded in the **Science of Reading** and widely used across K-3.

This post explains how **LitLab ensures precise, data-verified alignment with UFLI Foundations** through every word students encounter. Using decodability analysis across thousands of stories, you’ll see how **LitLab maintains over 95% decodability throughout the complete UFLI sequence**. The result is simple: teachers get rigorously aligned materials that fit their existing instruction, and students gain quality and engaging reading practice that builds confidence, fluency, and mastery one skill at a time.

## Why UFLI Alignment Matters

[UFLI (University of Florida Literacy Institute) Foundations](https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/foundations/) offers a structured scope and sequence that teaches phonics systematically from simple to complex patterns. Teachers using UFLI need materials that match that progression precisely.

According to research, the level of decoding difficulty in a text is a unique and significant predictor of both miscues and passage reading fluency (_Saha et al., 2021_). In other words, when students encounter phonics patterns they haven’t yet been taught, they’re more likely to struggle with accuracy and fluency during oral reading.

This highlights the importance of tightly controlled, skill-aligned texts—like those in LitLab—where decodability is optimized.

Practicing newly learned grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in context helps solidify decoding skills. Research shows that students who practice taught GPCs in decodable texts apply more letter-sound knowledge strategies when reading less controlled or authentic texts later on (_Mesmer, 2008_). In short, highly decodable reading builds transferable skills.

That’s where **LitLab’s alignment with UFLI** makes a difference.

Every UFLI story in LitLab is built around a specific UFLI lesson, carefully controlling for phonics patterns so that students encounter only those they’ve been explicitly taught.

## How LitLab Ensures UFLI Decodability

At LitLab we've developed a **phonics-aware AI assistant** that helps us create decodable stories that adheres very tightly to the target skill and prior skills from the UFLI Foundations scope and sequence. **Each story in LitLab’s Grab-and-Go Decodable Library is created and evaluated by an educator who is an expert in the Science of Reading.**

A cornerstone of this process is ensuring high decodability. What is decodability? Decodability is the percentage of words that can be decoded by a student using the patterns a student has been taught up to that point. This concept is a cornerstone of UFLI Foundations and followed strictly for all LitLab stories.

We measure this using the same phoneme-grapheme correspondence progression defined by UFLI. The result: highly controlled texts that maintain readability, coherence, and instructional alignment.

## The Data: How Decodable Are LitLab Stories?

To quantify how closely LitLab aligns with UFLI, we analyzed thousands of stories across the entire UFLI sequence. The results speak for themselves.

### 1\. Median Decodability by UFLI Skill

How tightly aligned are LitLab’s stories to UFLI’s skills and pedagogy?

![Median Decodability by UFLI Skill](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_10_ufli_alignment/body_fig1.png)

Not only does LitLab offer numerous stories for each UFLI skill, the data above shows that **across all 128 UFLI Lessons, LitLab stories maintain a median decodability above 90%**, with most skills exceeding 95%. Each point on this chart represents the median decodability for stories tagged to that skill, meaning that nearly all words in those stories can be decoded using that skill and prior knowledge.

This demonstrates **consistency across the full scope and sequence**, ensuring teachers can trust that LitLab stories remain tightly aligned from early short vowels through advanced vowel teams and r-controlled syllables.

### 2\. Story Decodability Distribution

How decodable are LitLab’s stories?

![Distribution of Story Decodability](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_10_ufli_alignment/body_fig2.png)

The above figure shows the distribution by decodability for all UFLI-aligned decodables that are available to educators in LitLab’s Grab-and-Go Decodable Library. The higher the count of stories in a decodability bucket, the more stories LitLab has to offer teachers at that decodability level. First, notice that there are no stories in LitLab’s staff-curated grab-and-go decodable library with a decodability lower than 75%. **LitLab’s UFLI-aligned stories maintain a median decodability above 97%**, with fewer than 5% of all LitLab UFLI-aligned stories having a decodability below 86%.

In other words, **nearly all stories are highly decodable**, and even the lowest 5% maintain strong alignment to UFLI’s principles and pedagogy. This provides teachers flexibility to differentiate (beyond skill-level), by using the most controlled texts for early practice or slightly more open texts for fluency and comprehension work.

### 3\. Story Length vs. Decodability

But are all LitLab stories created equal?

![Story Length vs Decodability](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_10_ufli_alignment/body_fig3.png)

The above scatter plot shows the decodability (y-axis) as a function of the number of words in each story (x-axis) on LitLab. The graph shows that **LitLab stories remain consistently decodable regardless of length**. Even as word count increases from early 30-word CVC stories to more advanced 400-word passages, decodability stays above 90%. An analysis shows the correlation between Word Count and Decodability was 0.06, which indicates no significant correlation between these two variables. This means teachers can confidently assign longer stories for fluency and comprehension without compromising their instructional practice.

## What This Means for Classrooms

For teachers, the takeaway is simple: **LitLab fits directly into UFLI-based phonics instruction without adding extra steps or guesswork.** Every decodable story in LitLab has already been analyzed for decodability, tagged by UFLI lesson, and verified to stay within the phonics patterns students have been taught.

Teachers can:

-   **Search by UFLI lesson or skill** to instantly find stories that reinforce that day’s instruction.
-   **Assign or print stories with confidence**, knowing every text meets rigorous decodability thresholds.
-   **Use decodability metrics** to choose the right level of challenge for each group or individual reader.
-   **Create new stories** with LitLab’s story generator, which automatically aligns to the same UFLI skill progression used in the Grab-and-Go Library.

For administrators, this alignment ensures **instructional consistency and data-backed quality** across classrooms. Schools can be confident that all decodable materials, whether created by staff or selected from LitLab’s library, follow the same structured phonics framework. This reduces variation between teachers, supports fidelity to UFLI, and strengthens overall reading outcomes.

In short, LitLab makes it easy to bring **rigorous, Science of Reading aligned practice** to every student. Teachers spend less time searching for the right materials and more time teaching. Students spend more time reading stories that match what they have learned, building both **accuracy and fluency** in authentic, engaging contexts.

Together, UFLI and LitLab provide the **structure and scalability** schools need to turn systematic phonics instruction into confident, joyful reading.

## Ready to See UFLI Alignment in Action?

Explore the full [UFLI-aligned Grab-and-Go Decodable Library](https://www.litlab.ai/gallery/v2?author=staff&sequence=ufli) and see how LitLab supports your district’s literacy goals with precise, consistent phonics practice.

_Written by: Drew McCann, K-3 Literacy Specialist and Head of Learning at LitLab.ai_

* * *

\[1\] Saha, N. M., Cutting, L. E., Del Tufo, S. N., & Bailey, S. (2021). Initial validation of a measure of decoding difficulty as a unique predictor of miscues and passage reading fluency. _Scientific Studies of Reading_, _25_(5), 404–418. [https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2020.1817093](https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2020.1817093)

\[2\] Mesmer, H. A. E. (2008). _Tools for matching readers to texts: Research-based practices_. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

See how LitLab maintains 97%+ median decodability across all 128 UFLI Foundations lessons — with the data to prove it. 

How LitLab Aligns to UFLI Foundations — Backed by Data

When working with early readers, decodable texts are a powerful tool to support phonics-based reading instruction. But even the most carefully constructed decodable story often contains a few words students haven’t yet fully mastered. That’s where previewing (or pre-teaching) comes in. Thoughtfully selecting which words to introduce before reading can make the difference between a choppy decoding experience and a confident, successful read. It is also a way to introduce unfamiliar vocabulary, helping students build strong comprehension of the text.

An analysis has shown that LitLab stories are highly decodable, with an average decodability greater than 95%, leaving just a handful of words in each story that may require previewing or pre-teaching with students. In this post, we’ll share a clear framework for selecting words to pre-teach using LitLab Stories as an example — but the principles apply across any decodable instruction.

## Why Preview Words?

-   **Fluency and confidence:** Removing stumbling blocks allows students to apply their decoding skills smoothly and prevents word guessing.
-   **Comprehension:** Knowing a key word’s meaning helps students follow the story or text without confusion.

## A Framework for Previewing Words

Here are the criteria we suggest when selecting 3–5 words to preview:

**1\. Out-of-sequence words**  
These are words that may be phonetically irregular (said, does, was) or phonetically regular (play, house, take), but haven’t been introduced yet in your phonics sequence. While LitLab stories are highly controlled to include word patterns and sight words already taught, these words sometimes appear in LitLab Stories and other decodables to make sentences more natural.

**2\. Words Critical to Comprehension**  
Sometimes a word is essential for understanding the plot or characters, even if it’s rare or outside the students’ decoding range. Previewing it can have a huge impact on your student’s comprehension of the story.

## How to Preview Effectively

**For vocabulary words:**

1.  Say it aloud and have students repeat.
2.  Show it in context in the story.
3.  Give a short, student-friendly definition.
4.  Ask a question to connect it to their experience.
5.  Optional: act it out or use a quick sketch.

**Out-of-sequence words:**

1.  **Say it** – Say the word and use it in a sentence.
2.  **Hear it** – Stretch out and say each sound you hear.
3.  **Map it** – Match sounds to letters as you write the word.
4.  **Mark it** – Put a heart over the tricky part you must “learn by heart.”
5.  **Show it** – Show students where they will see it in the story.

## Concrete example: Pre-teaching words for a decodable story (Shan Helps Pick Up Trash)

Below is an example from the LitLab Story, [Shan Helps Pick up Trash](https://www.litlab.ai/library/cm8ypen250051l003cqs1e5gz).

![Preview example](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_10_pre-teach/body_fig1.png)

### Steps to Choose Words to Preview

1.  Find vocabulary words that are critical to understanding the story.
2.  Find words that are non-decodable.
3.  Check how many times each word repeats.
4.  Select the words that appear most frequently and are crucial to understanding the text.

#### Step 1: Find vocabulary words

-   compost
-   recycle

#### Step 2: Find non-decodable words

-   compost
-   day
-   earth
-   recycle

LitLab will do this step for you! You can find non-decodable words in the “Words to pre-teach” section of the vocabulary guide.

![Vocabulary guide](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_10_10_pre-teach/body_fig2.png)

#### Step 3: Note the frequency of the words

-   compost (1x)
-   day (1x)
-   earth (1x)
-   recycle (1x)

#### Step 4: Select words to pre-teach

-   **compost** — Why? crucial to understanding the text
-   **recycle** — Why? out-of-sequence word with a prefix that is also crucial for understanding
-   **earth** — Why? out-of-sequence word

If a word only appears one time and you think it might be familiar to students, or it's not crucial to the meaning of the text, you may want to choose a word that appears more frequently to preview instead.

## Keep It Simple. Keep It Purposeful.

Previewing doesn’t mean front-loading every unfamiliar word. In this example, we didn’t preview the word “day” even though it is an out-of-sequence word because it is a familiar word often used in the classroom.

Use this time to support meaning and confidence — not to rob the story of its decodable power. With practice, you’ll quickly learn which words need to be pre-taught and which should be left for students to decode.

Want to try it out? Browse our LitLab Stories and try previewing three words before reading with your class. Tag us with your annotated story!

👉 Explore decodable stories at [LitLab.ai](https://www.litlab.ai/)

_Written by: Jacqueline Ontell, Elementary Teacher, Special Education & Curriculum Development_

A practical framework for selecting 3–5 words to preview so students read decodable texts with confidence and comprehension.

How to Choose Which Words to Pre-Teach for Decodable Texts

## Nashville Classical Charter School: Driving Growth and Engagement with Personalized, Curriculum-aligned Decodables

![Quote from Administrator: "Both classes had growth/performance rates higher than the other 1st and 2nd grade classes. Thank you all at LitLab for helping us create engaged, fluent readers - a skill no one can take away from them. I can't tell you how much it means to me to know our kids are choosing to read (and doing it well) every day."](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_04_05_nashville_case_study/image1.png)

**[👉 Read the full case study here](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/Shareables/LitLab_NCCS_case_study.pdf)**

## Background

Nashville Classical Charter School (NCCS) has always been rooted in the science of reading. As part of that commitment, they prioritized decodable texts in their early literacy instruction. 

But over time, gaps in their existing materials began to show—particularly in the lower grades.

"Our options were severely limited," said Emma Colonna, Director of K-8 Humanities. "Students, especially in K-1, would run through the decodables quickly and get bored. Engagement and personal motivation dropped. We needed texts that could both support skill development and spark interest."

Compounding the challenge was the nature of decodables themselves: what's decodable for one student might be inaccessible to another if they haven't yet learned a specific sound-spelling pattern. Without a way to personalize texts based on individual mastery, teachers struggled to offer targeted practice.

## Why LitLab

When Emma and her team encountered LitLab, the fit was immediate. The platform offered a rare combination of engagement, precision, and instructional alignment.

LitLab's Student Practice Platform allowed teachers to assign stories matched to each student's phonics needs. Stories were dynamic, customizable, and tied directly to phonics patterns being taught in Tier 1\. For students, the experience felt fresh and relevant. For teachers, it added a powerful tool for reinforcing instruction and differentiating support.

>"LitLab addressed multiple challenges at once. It increased student engagement, enabled data-driven practice, and aligned with our core phonics instruction. It was exactly what we needed."  
— Emma Colonna, Director of K-8 Humanities, Nashville Classical Charter School

## Implementation

NCCS launched a focused pilot in two classrooms—1st and 2nd grade—led by high-performing teachers Ms. Mullen and Ms. Ryan. The team was intentional about how the tool would be rolled out. Emma oversaw structural planning and served as the liaison with LitLab. Brigid, the Assistant Principal of K-2, supported implementation and coaching on the ground.

LitLab was used during the school's Tier 2 intervention block. While teachers worked with small groups, the rest of the class used LitLab independently. Teachers assigned decodable patterns weekly, based on data from AIMSWeb and CKLA. The weekly cadence allowed for rapid, responsive targeting of skills that students had not yet mastered.

"We didn't just drop a new tool in and hope it worked," Emma noted. "We had a clear plan, tight feedback loops with LitLab, and used our own data to make sure the implementation aligned with student needs."

## Results

By the end of the year, the results stood out.

Both classrooms that piloted LitLab outperformed their peers on end-of-year benchmarks—not just in proficiency, but in student growth. These two classrooms were in the top quartile for growth nationwide. The second grade class, in particular, showed outsized progress despite serving a large number of students with intellectual and behavioral needs. Every student in both groups made gains in oral reading fluency.

![Example of aligned decodable text 2](https://storage.googleapis.com/litlab-assets/blog/2025_04_05_nashville_case_study/image2.png)

Student engagement saw a marked shift. Teachers reported sustained focus—15 to 20 minutes of independent use—and growing excitement around reading.

> "LitLab supported the broader instructional ecosystem we had worked hard to build."

Students were running out of decodables—and losing motivation. This case study shows how Nashville Classical Charter School used LitLab's personalized, curriculum-aligned texts to drive measurable fluency growth and reignite student engagement. 

Case Study: Nashville Classical Charter School

There is a persistent transfer gap in early literacy instruction. Students learn phonics skills during explicit instruction, then struggle to apply those same skills when reading connected text independently. Strong instruction matters enormously, but it is not enough on its own. Students also need aligned practice that helps bridge the gap between learning a skill and actually using it as readers.

For practice to truly support reading growth, it has to be aligned to instruction, engaging enough to sustain effort, and consistent enough to build fluency and confidence over time. LitLab was built on that premise. 

Our logic model, developed alongside LeanLab Education and Dr. Lynne Harden through a formal codesign research process, is the clearest articulation of that theory of change. It outlines how we believe aligned decodable practice supports reading growth, and the research base that grounds each step of the model.

[Download the full logic model →](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8K8s2Sud8HgHYG6YgeX6PNdWZMDHMfW/view)

---

## Why a Logic Model?

Logic models are standard practice in education research and program evaluation. They make an intervention's assumptions explicit: here's who uses it, here's what they do with it, here's what we expect to happen, and here's the evidence that those expectations are reasonable.

For LitLab, that documentation matters beyond the research community. Districts adopting new EdTech tools deserve to know not just what a product does, but why it should work. The logic model is our commitment, in writing, to that question.

---

## The Problem We're Solving

Too often, decodable practice breaks down in implementation. Texts feel disconnected from the phonics lesson, students lose interest quickly, and teachers spend too much time searching for texts that actually match instruction.

In many classrooms, phonics practice is isolated from real reading time and not aligned to where students actually are in the scope and sequence. In others, teachers simply do not have enough accessible, engaging decodable texts to provide meaningful repetition and practice.

The result is a transfer gap: students can demonstrate a skill during instruction but struggle to carry it over into independent, connected reading.

LitLab was built to help close that gap by giving students plentiful, engaging decodable practice aligned to the skills they are learning, while also making it easier for teachers to deliver and monitor that practice.

---

## How LitLab Works

LitLab is designed for K–2 students, classroom teachers, interventionists, and literacy specialists.

The platform includes a library of 1,000+ grab-and-go decodable stories aligned to major phonics scope and sequences, along with comprehension questions, printable activities, and fluency supports. Teachers can also generate custom fiction and nonfiction decodables aligned to a specific lesson, phonics skill, or instructional sequence.

Students read aloud, record themselves, create personalized stories, and practice phonics skills in connected text. Teachers can assign stories, monitor engagement, and review student-level data, including decoding accuracy, comprehension performance, words per minute, reading time, and assignment completion.

The goal is simple: make it easier for teachers to connect instruction and practice, and easier for students to experience successful, meaningful reading practice every day.

---

## What We Expect to Happen

Our logic model organizes outcomes across three time horizons: short-term, medium-term, and long-term.

**Short-Term Outcomes**

In the short term, teachers gain easier access to aligned practice materials, spend less time searching for resources, and gain clearer visibility into student progress and support needs.

For students, the immediate outcomes are foundational reading gains: stronger word recognition, improved phoneme awareness, and increased fluency through repeated reading, oral reading practice, and feedback cycles (Muter et al., 2004).

**Medium-Term Outcomes**

As students practice consistently with aligned connected text, decoding becomes more automatic, allowing greater cognitive attention to shift toward comprehension (Muter et al., 2004; Kendeou et al., 2009).

The research also suggests that early reading success shapes identity. Students who begin to see themselves as capable readers are more likely to remain engaged in reading over time (Chapman & Tunmer, 2003).

Choice and personalization matter as well. When students experience ownership, relevance, and success while reading, engagement deepens, and engaged readers are more likely to practice more. (Cordova & Lepper, 1996).

Teachers also benefit from stronger instructional coherence: aligned materials, actionable data, and clearer insight into where students need additional support.

**Long-Term Outcomes**

The long-term stakes of early literacy are well documented. Students who are not reading proficiently by third grade are significantly more likely to leave school without a diploma (Hernandez, 2011). Early word recognition and fluency continue to predict later reading achievement and college readiness (Rasinski et al., 2016).

Our long-term theory of change is straightforward: Students who consistently practice reading with aligned, engaging, personalized texts develop stronger reading skills, greater confidence, and a more positive relationship with reading itself.

---

## What the Logic Model Assumes

No logic model is unconditional. Ours rests on three honest assumptions. 

First, students must be engaged by the texts they read. Consistent practice only happens when students are willing to keep reading.

Second, repetition matters. Reading growth compounds through frequent, sustained exposure to connected text over time.

Third, LitLab is designed to strengthen and extend an existing Tier 1 phonics program, not replace one. The platform works best when paired with explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills already happening in the classroom.

LitLab is not intended to replace core instruction. It is designed to make aligned practice more accessible, personalized, and actionable within structured literacy classrooms.

---

## Where We Are on the Evidence Trajectory

LitLab is currently ESSA Tier IV certified, with a Tier II quasi-experimental study underway. Every major product decision is grounded in the peer-reviewed research based on early literacy, and our logic model reflects that directly. Each proposed outcome is tied to existing evidence.

[Read the full logic model →](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8K8s2Sud8HgHYG6YgeX6PNdWZMDHMfW/view)

---

## References

Baker, L. & Wigfield, A. (1999). Dimensions of Children's Motivation for Reading and Their Relations to Reading Activity and Reading Achievement. *Reading Research Quarterly, 34*(4), 452-477.

Chapman, J.W. & Tunmer, W.E. (2003). Reading Difficulties, Reading-Related Self-Perceptions, and Strategies for Overcoming Negative Self-Beliefs. *Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19*, 5-24.

Cordova, D.I. & Lepper, M. (1996). Intrinsic Motivation and the Process of Learning: Beneficial Effects of Contextualization, Personalization, and Choice. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 88*(4), 715-730.

Hernandez, D.J. (2011). *Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation.* The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Kendeou, P., van den Broek, P., White, M.J., & Lynch, J.S. (2009). Predicting reading comprehension in early elementary school. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 101*(4), 765-778.

Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M.J., & Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, Rimes, Vocabulary, and Grammatical Skills as Foundations of Early Reading Development. *Developmental Psychology, 40*(5), 665-681.

Rasinski, T. et al. (2016). Reading Fluency and College Readiness. *Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60*(4), 1-8.


LitLab is ESSA Tier IV certified. Here's the research behind how we're built, and the logic model that grounds every product decision we make.


Literacy insights for district and school teams

All Posts