How LitLab Aligns Stories to Your Phonics Sequence

LitLab is built around the concept of a scope and sequence — the exact order in which your phonics program introduces skills. Every story, generator output, and student assignment respects that order.

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Supported programs‡

When you set your default sequence in Settings, LitLab uses it as your default across the platform:

• The library and generator default to your chosen sequence
• Story cards and the generator preview show decodability against your program’s lessons
• Assignments default to your program when you create them

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How alignment works

Each phonics skill (e.g., “short /a/,” “consonant digraphs,” “silent e”) has a defined position in each program’s sequence. LitLab tags every story with the earliest lesson at which it becomes fully decodable, along with a concentration of target skills. For example, a story tagged “UFLI Lesson 47” is decodable for any UFLI classroom on Lesson 47 or later — but not earlier.

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Changing your sequence

You can change your default sequence at any time from Settings. Existing assignments stay pinned to the sequence and lesson they were created with — changing your default won’t retroactively change them. Library filtering and generator defaults pick up the change right away; Skill Maps can take up to 24 hours to reflect it.

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Checking decodability yourself

Every story in LitLab — from the gallery or generated by AI — shows a decodability score right on its card and in the generator preview, calculated against your sequence and lesson. Want to check a piece of text you wrote yourself? Use the Decodability Checker — paste in any passage, choose a sequence and lesson, and it will:

1. Break each word into its graphemes and phonemes
2. Check whether each grapheme has been taught at or before that lesson
3. Flag any words that require skills not yet taught, apart from your program’s designated high-frequency/sight words

You’ll get a decodability score plus a breakdown of which words are decodable, which are review, and which aren’t decodable yet. _{‡ LitLab aligns practice to leading phonics programs for identification purposes only. All program names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.}