Students read the decodable assigned for the specific lesson and skill from the Tier 1 or Tier 2 program that the class is working on. They can read silently, with a partner, aloud while recording themselves, or together as a whole class with the teacher leading. As they read, students answer comprehension questions about the story and practice spelling target words pulled from the text, getting instant feedback on whether they got the words correct. Once students finish their assigned reading, they can generate their own decodable stories that help them practice the same skills, choosing things like the character and setting.

LitLab generates decodable stories, building each one to match a specific point in a phonics program's scope and sequence. Rather than an open-ended language model, it runs on a rule-based engine that breaks words into their sound-and-letter parts and assembles stories using only the skills a student has been taught, so the text stays decodable. It generates an illustration to go with each story, and can build a story around characters, settings, or vocabulary that the teacher or student chooses. If students choose to read aloud and record themselves, a separate speech-recognition tool analyzes the recording, comparing what it hears to the text to flag which words the student got right, which they missed, and how quickly and smoothly they read. When it catches a struggle, it segments the word into phonemes, shows a mouth-and-tongue video for each sound, blends them, then asks the student to do the same. It traces each word a student reads or spells back to the lesson that skill was taught in, and uses oral-reading and spelling accuracy to place each student's progress along the curriculum's scope and sequence. It turns that into fluency and accuracy data for the teacher and checks students' answers on the comprehension questions and spelling tasks, telling the student right away whether each was correct.

Teachers choose the phonics skill their class is working on, based on the core curriculum, and assign matching decodables from the dashboard, setting different assignments for different groups or grade levels. When they need a story for a specific skill, they can also generate their own, building it around particular characters, names, or vocabulary. They decide how students will use the stories, as independent or partner reading, as a whole-group story the teacher leads, or as a literacy center students rotate through. They can also decide whether to record student reading for later review. Once students have read, teachers can review the dashboard data, which shows completion, comprehension, and pre-reading skill data and, when recording was on, their fluency and accuracy data. They use this to see who has mastered the skill and who needs more practice, to plan small groups, and to decide what to reteach. Teachers can pull up a student's recording during a reading conference to listen back with them, and can lock the create-your-own feature when they want students focused on assigned reading.

Leaders adopt LitLab and set the scope of its use across a school or school system. They can set routines around its use and consider scheduling shifts to fit the decodable practice into existing phonics blocks. Leaders can access the admin dashboard to see how reading is progressing across classrooms and grades, help teachers identify where students are struggling, and target coaching and PD around implementation.