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We help educators confidently implement structured literacy through simple routines that connect PA, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing into instruction that actually flows.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, and as an educational diagnostician, I get a LOT of questions about dyslexia. ⁠⁠Whe...
10/09/2026

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, and as an educational diagnostician, I get a LOT of questions about dyslexia. ⁠
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When diagnosing dyslexia, I like to keep it simple. There are two key things I'm looking at:⁠
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1. What does the student's literacy profile look like?⁠
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When considering a student's literacy profile, I'm focusing on their "outcome skills." Outcome skills are specific reading and writing skills that can be easily observed and measured.⁠
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→ I'm looking at whether they can sound out words for reading and spelling (I look at their ability to read real words, nonsense words, and isolated spelling).⁠
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→ I'm looking at their overall fluency and automaticity for phonetically regular words (real and nonsense) as well as phonetically irregular words that they would need to rely on visual/orthographic memory to read. I'm also looking at connected text fluency here.⁠
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→ I'm looking at their reading comprehension.⁠
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From there, I essentially place them onto a grid using word recognition and comprehension on each axis. Dyslexia is specific to a decoding or word recognition need.⁠
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2. What do their foundational literacy abilities look like?⁠
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At this level, I want to understand the underlying neural processes.⁠
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→ I'm looking at their phonological awareness ability (and the automaticity of that skill)⁠
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→ I'm looking at their rapid naming ability (how quickly can they identify specific letter/number patterns?) This is part of orthographic awareness.⁠
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→ I'm looking at their underlying language abilities, including vocabulary (both receptive and expressive), listening comprehension ability, and oral expression.⁠
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If a student is struggling with automatic word recognition caused by difficulty in orthographic (visual) or phonological (sound) processing, they may have dyslexia.⁠
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Of course, we want to look at a complete battery of assessments as well as environmental factors, but this is my quick initial gut check.⁠
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If you're curious to learn more about dyslexia, comment "DYSLEXIA" and I'll send you a link to learn more about our Spotlight PD training on this.

Have you ever had a student who makes great progress in literacy intervention, exits the program, and then ends up right...
10/09/2026

Have you ever had a student who makes great progress in literacy intervention, exits the program, and then ends up right back in intervention the following school year?⁠
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I was having a conversation about this today, and it got me thinking about something I see all the time.⁠
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We're teaching the phonics patterns. We're incorporating vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Students are demonstrating the skills during their intervention lessons.⁠
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But are they actually learning to apply those skills independently?⁠
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Because there's a big difference between a student being able to successfully complete a phonics activity with us and being able to recognize and use that same pattern when they encounter it in an unfamiliar text.⁠
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And there's an equally big difference between answering comprehension questions with our guidance and independently making meaning from what they've read.⁠
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Now, there are several reasons students might need intervention again, but one of the first things I want to look at is whether the skills we're teaching are actually transferring beyond our lessons.⁠
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Are we teaching students to successfully complete literacy intervention activities, or are we helping them become independent readers and writers?⁠
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That's why I'm so intentional about connecting skills throughout my literacy intervention lessons, using consistent routines, and giving students repeated opportunities to apply what they're learning.⁠
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Because ultimately, I don't want students to need me to walk them through every word, every passage, or every strategy.⁠
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I want them to be able to do those things on their own.⁠
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If you've been wondering how to bring those connections into your own intervention lessons, I have a free training where I walk through exactly how I structure my instruction.⁠
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You'll also get my Structured Literacy Intervention Checklist so you can take a closer look at one of your own lessons.⁠
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Comment ELEMENTARY and I'll point you in the right direction!

During our last 5CCL monthly meeting, one of our educators brought up a student who was struggling to identify the main ...
10/08/2026

During our last 5CCL monthly meeting, one of our educators brought up a student who was struggling to identify the main idea and summarize connected text.⁠
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But as we talked through what she was seeing, another question came up:⁠
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What is actually breaking down first?⁠
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→ Are they misreading words because they can’t decode them?⁠
→ Are they reading the words incorrectly because they don’t know what they mean?⁠
→ Or are they not even noticing that what they read didn’t make sense?⁠
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Those are three very different needs, and they lead to three very different instructional targets.⁠
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So before jumping straight to more phonics, vocabulary, or comprehension strategies, her next step was actually much simpler: see whether the students could identify the words they misread or didn’t know while reading connected text.⁠
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Because if a student doesn’t recognize when they've misread a word or don't know a word, they can’t use all of those strategies we’re teaching them to fix it.⁠
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So, an important question for you to consider: do your students even know they're missing words as they're reading?!⁠
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And if you want help thinking through the next goal or instructional target for your students, comment "5CCL" and we’ll send you the link to learn more.

One of the things I do to keep literacy intervention simple and sustainable is to follow repeatable processes, so I'm no...
10/05/2026

One of the things I do to keep literacy intervention simple and sustainable is to follow repeatable processes, so I'm not constantly reinventing the wheel.⁠
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I always use this 4-Step Process in my literacy intervention:⁠
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1. Review student data - I'm usually looking at a few key data points to get an idea of what exactly is going on for each student. I like to organize the data into one simple view so I can see everyone together (it just helps me feel a little more in control 😅)⁠
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2. Match students to the appropriate intervention approach - I have a few different approaches I like to use depending on student needs. It may be a structured, systematic literacy program/approach, a vocabulary and comprehension-focused approach, targeted skill instruction, or a short-term approach (again, all depending on the need).⁠
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3. Create student groups - I then match my students based on their data and intervention approach with others who have similar needs/profiles.⁠
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4. Begin intervention - Now, within each of these different intervention approaches, I have a consistent framework I use so I'm not reinventing the wheel all the time.⁠
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Now that I've followed this same approach over and over, it just feels like second nature, and I don't have to stress about what that looks like at all. It just feels like a groove.⁠
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If you're curious and want to know more about what this looks like, this is exactly what we're working on in 5CCL, so comment "5CCL" and I'll send you a link where you can learn more about it.

So I had this recurring minor panic every time a parent needed a summary of student progress or an IEP or MTSS/RTI meeti...
10/05/2026

So I had this recurring minor panic every time a parent needed a summary of student progress or an IEP or MTSS/RTI meeting got scheduled where I needed to share my observations of my students' progress.⁠
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The thing is, I know my students, and I always have a good feel for what we're working on and how they're progressing, but pulling something together quickly to share always felt like I was reinventing the wheel and scrambling a bit. ⁠
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Which, of course, was stressful because it always felt like these popped up right in the middle of everything else I was trying to get done. When I had more time, I could always complete some additional assessments and pull something nice together, but those last-minute conversations were really stressing me out!⁠
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So, I put together a Caseload Dashboard where I could see all of my students in one view and then click on each student for a one-page summary of what they're working on and one simple data point I was tracking.⁠
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Things are feeling so much more organized and in control (like I actually have all my ducks in a row) since I started using it. ⁠
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On Monday, October 5th @ 4:00 PM Pacific | 7:00 PM Eastern I'm running a live online workshop for our members of 5CCL Learning Lab so we can build this out together! 30 minutes and you can feel in control of your caseload and your data this year!⁠
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Comment "5CCL" and we'll send you a link to learn more about the Learning Lab!

If you know me, you know that I'm an absolute data nerd 📊, but the thing is, you probably have more data than you need.⁠...
10/02/2026

If you know me, you know that I'm an absolute data nerd 📊, but the thing is, you probably have more data than you need.⁠
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There are so many literacy data points we can collect, but that doesn't mean we actually need all of that data.⁠
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This year, I'm working to be very intentional about the data I'm collecting for each of my students. To do that, I'm asking myself: What am I working to change for this particular student or group?⁠
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For example, if a student primarily needs word recognition support, I want to know:⁠
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→ Are the targeted patterns becoming more automatic?⁠
→ Is decoding improving?⁠
→ Is that improvement transferring into connected text?⁠
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If a student primarily needs language comprehension support, I want to know:⁠
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→ What level of text can they access?⁠
→ Are vocabulary and comprehension improving?⁠
→ Can they understand, organize, and talk about what they read?⁠
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And if they need support in both, I need enough information from both sides to know whether my instruction is working.⁠
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But I still don’t need to measure everything for every student.⁠
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One of the things I'm really leaning into this year is that good progress monitoring isn’t about collecting the most data.⁠
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It’s about collecting the right data for the decision you’re trying to make.⁠
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And if you could use a sounding board as you're working through this, these are exactly the conversations we're having inside the 5CCL Learning Lab. If you're interested, comment "5CCL" and we'll send you a link to learn more!

In our last SMARTER Literacy Podcast, Mikayla shared that when she first started in literacy intervention, she created i...
10/01/2026

In our last SMARTER Literacy Podcast, Mikayla shared that when she first started in literacy intervention, she created individual sound decks for each of her students.⁠
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Isn't it the absolute cutest?! She has an incredible talent...and...most of the decks she spent hours illustrating were lost within about 2 days! 🫠⁠
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The lesson here? We want to make sure our instruction is individualized for our students, and we have to make sure that individualization, targeting, or differentiation for each of them is actually sustainable.⁠
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We don't need to create individual lesson plans or materials for each of our students to make meaningful progress. We need to know where they are. And to do that, we can get a general understanding of their literacy profile.⁠
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Once we've identified their profile, we can start to put together the strategies and routines that best support each of those profiles (no new lessons required).⁠
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If you want to learn more about how we're doing this, this is exactly the work we're doing inside the 5CCL Learning Lab; we'd love to have you there. Comment "5CCL" and we'll send you a link where you can learn more!

Sometimes our students need a ton of repetitions to really solidify a concept. In these cases, games are my number one i...
09/30/2026

Sometimes our students need a ton of repetitions to really solidify a concept. In these cases, games are my number one intervention tool.

One of the things I love best about games is the ability to mix it up each time we play or to mix it up to meet different student needs.

For example, if I were to pull a "roll and read" game, I could use that same exact game multiple times, but each time we play, we have a different "target."

The first time we play, we will roll, read the word, and then say or write a word that rhymes with the word they landed on.

The next time we play, we will roll, read the word, and say or write how many syllables and sounds the word has.

The next time, we will roll, read the word, and rate how well we know it on a scale from 1 - maybe a nonsense word to 4 - I can define this word. Then we can work to define it.

Then we might mix it up, and instead of rolling and reading, we will roll the die, multiply the number by 10, and read through the list of words for that many seconds to see how far we can get.

The next time, we can roll, land on a word, and use that word in a sentence (even more fun when the sentences between the players need to build off of one another).

The next time, we can roll, land on a word, write it down, and then use all the words we landed on in a collaborative story with our partners.

So even though I'm using the same game or type of game over and over, it never gets dull because I'm constantly mixing it up.

How do you use games in your lessons?

If you're looking for more ideas, we put together a Spotlight PD training on this. Comment "GAMES," and we'll send you the link to learn more and grab our favorites!

Effective literacy intervention is not actually about the phonics patterns we are teaching. It's actually about creating...
09/28/2026

Effective literacy intervention is not actually about the phonics patterns we are teaching. It's actually about creating an efficient and effective neural connection between the sound, visual, and meaning processing centers of the brain.⁠
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To help create this connection, we want to:⁠
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→ Teach students how individual sounds come together to create words.⁠
→ Teach them that after we blend the sounds, words can carry different meanings.⁠
→ Teach students about how words come together to create meaning in sentences.⁠
→ Teach them how those sentences come together to create meaning in paragraphs and beyond.⁠
→ Show them how those same patterns translate into spelling and writing.⁠
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But more importantly than any of those things on their own, we want students to see how all of that comes together, how it connects. That's often the missing link. We think students are doing this automatically, but many aren't!⁠
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If you'd like to see what our routines look like across each of the components (and how we tie them together), comment "ROUTINES" and we'll send you a link to download our free Literacy Routines Guide.

When I'm providing literacy instruction, one of my first goals is always to determine what type of support they need.⁠⁠T...
09/25/2026

When I'm providing literacy instruction, one of my first goals is always to determine what type of support they need.⁠
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To do this, I think of where each student falls inside a grid. I'm looking at their decoding ability and their language comprehension ability. From there, I place them across an axis from weak decoding to strong decoding and weak language comprehension to strong language comprehension. This essentially creates four possible categories my students will fall into:⁠
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→ Group A: Solid decoding + solid language comprehension⁠
→ Group B: Weaker decoding + solid language comprehension⁠
→ Group C: Solid decoding + weaker language comprehension⁠
→ Group D: Weak decoding + weak language comprehension⁠
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I support all of these students in different ways.⁠
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For Group D students, I am starting with decoding instruction as my base to make sure students have the tools to access the words within the text, but then I'm spending a lot of time on the "Universal Language Comprehension Routine."
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The "Universal Language Comprehension Routine" is a consistent routine we always use before, during, and after reading. It's almost like a formula.

Before reading, we activate background knowledge by previewing words with the Vocabulary Framework and discussing what we already know about the topic.

During reading, we use the 5 Ws Sticky Note strategy.

After reading, we go five levels deep with comprehension (recall, organize, connect, leap, and analyze).⁠
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If you want to learn more about how we pull this together, check out our free on-demand PD training. Comment "ELEMENTARY" and we'll send you the link to sign up!

Address

2821 S Parker Road
Aurora, CO
80014

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 6pm
Tuesday 7am - 6pm
Wednesday 7am - 6pm
Thursday 7am - 6pm
Friday 7am - 6pm

Telephone

(303) 309-9135

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