SMARTER Intervention

SMARTER Intervention We have a deep desire to change the lives of struggling readers. You feel stuck because you’re not sure what to do next. That's where we come in.
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You see their brightness, their creativity, but you worry that their love of learning will begin to dim.

I have a student I'm working with in the 4th grade who continues to struggle with phonological awareness (PA skills). It...
03/16/2026

I have a student I'm working with in the 4th grade who continues to struggle with phonological awareness (PA skills). It really impacts his ability to fluently sound out unfamiliar words when reading, and his spelling is not great.⁠
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When I started working with him, we spent more time in our sessions working on phoneme blending, segmenting sentences, producing rhymes, and segmenting syllables and sounds.⁠
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Now, he's doing much better with the majority of his PA skills, but he's still struggling with segmenting, and his spelling still reflects that difficulty! So right now, we are really just focusing on those specific areas inside our PA routine (we are no longer hitting every skill in our 10-part drill). We are spending our focus on identifying how many syllables, how many sounds, and what type of sounds (e.g., vowel, consonant, R, L, etc.).⁠
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We will keep working on incorporating these skills into his spelling until that process becomes automatic. But here's the important takeaway...⁠
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It's not about developing his PA skills in isolation. It's about developing his PA skills so he can spell effectively, so I always want to make sure he's drawing that connection!⁠
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Click here: https://smarterintervention.mykajabi.com/routines-guide and we'll send you our Literacy Routines Guide so you can see exactly how we structure our PA instruction.

This week, an educator asked me about the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness. It's such a great ques...
03/13/2026

This week, an educator asked me about the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness. It's such a great question because I feel like we use these big words to describe concepts, and they sound so similar that many of us just use them interchangeably.⁠
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There is a slight difference between them. At the most basic level, phonological awareness is an awareness of the sound structure of the language. It includes understanding the sound structure at the word, syllable, and sound level.⁠
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Phonemic awareness is focused just on the sound level. Phonemic awareness falls under the phonological awareness umbrella. Kind of like all squares (phonemic awareness) are rectangles (phonological awareness), but not all rectangles are squares.⁠
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At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that much EXCEPT that we like to make sure we are targeting phonological awareness for our students, working to develop skills at the word, syllable, and sound level in our instruction.⁠
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Click here https://smarterintervention.mykajabi.com/routines-guide, and we will send you our literacy routines, including our 10-Part phonological awareness drill we use to guide our PA instruction.

This idea popped up on my IG feed a few weeks ago, and it caught my attention (algorithm doing what it was designed to d...
03/13/2026

This idea popped up on my IG feed a few weeks ago, and it caught my attention (algorithm doing what it was designed to do 😂). The idea was that we were "sold a story" on phonological awareness and that PA wasn't as helpful or necessary as everyone was led to believe.⁠
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Well, that was scary, because none of us wants to be caught on the "wrong side" of the next "sold a story" feature. Having someone question your competence as a professional is one of the worst feelings ever...⁠
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Anyway, there was a research article that came out in 2024 about the "Optimal Cumulative Dosage of Early Phonemic Awareness Instruction" that found that when we tie letters to our phonemic awareness instruction, it leads to stronger outcomes for decoding than auditory tasks alone (no letters paired with the sounds).⁠
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This study and conversations around the idea sparked a debate on whether phonological awareness instruction (specifically at the sound level = phonemic awareness) was only beneficial when paired with letters, which brought several popular approaches and curricula into question.⁠
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But, the thing is...none of the individual skills we're targeting in our literacy instruction are most effective in isolation. The goal of our literacy instruction is to create neural activation across all the necessary neural pathways that support reading and writing. It's not about any of the skills on their own.⁠
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So...we weren't "sold a story" on phonological awareness. It is important. We do need to teach it, and it's okay if you don't always pair it with letters. Sometimes we don't.⁠
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We just want to make sure that students understand the connection, that they know WHY we're doing these activities. And sometimes our activities may target more than what they seem.⁠
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Auditory-only PA activities support working memory development, auditory attention, cognitive flexibility AND the ability to sound out words for reading and spelling. So, however you're targeting PA in your instruction ... it's perfect!⁠
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Are you currently incorporating PA in your instruction? Are you using letters to support it? Comment and let us know what's working for you right now.

If something feels like it's missing in your literacy instruction, it's usually not about the skills you're teaching. Yo...
03/11/2026

If something feels like it's missing in your literacy instruction, it's usually not about the skills you're teaching. You're doing all the things! You're hitting all the standards and the core components.

But sometimes it feels like something isn't quite clicking because students aren't actually creating the neural connections needed to read and write quickly and accurately.

What often happens is we target a specific skill, which creates activation in one of the key areas of the brain, but then it doesn't automatically connect to the other areas required for independent reading and writing.

For example, if we just memorize sight words from a flashcard without also thinking about the sounds in those words and the meaning of those words, students are really only activating the visual processing center of the brain.

Literacy instruction that really works is all about creating that connection between the visual pattern (the letters we see), the sounds we hear, and the meaning of the sound, word, sentence, or passage.

So each time you teach a literacy skill, see if you can't help students make that neural connection by connecting more than one part of the literacy processing triangle!

We know more than ever about effective literacy instruction. So why does it feel like we're still missing something? 🧐⁠⁠...
03/10/2026

We know more than ever about effective literacy instruction. So why does it feel like we're still missing something? 🧐⁠
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We know all the necessary components. We've learned about the importance of phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.⁠
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We've been incorporating these skills into our instruction for decades...so it's easy to start questioning ourselves, to keep asking, "Why are so many students still struggling to read and write on grade level?"⁠
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It's frustrating because we're all working so hard to change this reality. We look for new skills, new strategies, new curriculum, the next PD that will finally bring it all together. We try to address systemic issues and challenges that are often so much deeper than literacy itself.⁠
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It's a challenge. There's no easy answer. But we can take steps in the right direction. ⁠
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And one of the simplest steps is helping connect all the things we're already doing. Too often, students just aren't seeing how it all connects to "real reading" or something they will actually need and use in the future. ⁠
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One of the best things we can do is create simple routines that we use again and again to target these core literacy skills, so it becomes so natural that students don't even need to think about them. ⁠
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We can share why the skills we are teaching actually matter in their real, everyday lives.⁠
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You're doing great work. The next step is about taking all the skills you're already teaching and bringing them into a repeatable framework you can use over and over. ⁠
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Check out the 7 routines we've turned into a habit with our students. These simple routines only take a couple of minutes to implement each day, but the impact is pretty wild. https://smarterintervention.mykajabi.com/routines-guide

We've been talking recently about students who are close, but not fully proficient in literacy. ⁠⁠The students who aren'...
03/06/2026

We've been talking recently about students who are close, but not fully proficient in literacy. ⁠
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The students who aren't thriving in the classroom, but a full intensive intervention program doesn't feel like a fit either. ⁠
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We used to get really stuck when trying to support these students, because we didn't feel like we had a clear pathway on how to best help them. ⁠
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Everything changed when we started implementing simple literacy routines like this comprehension routine.⁠
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We start with a passage. This can be from their classwork, authentic text, or something high-interest. ⁠
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From there, we will target comprehension... ⁠
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🟢 Before reading - by activating background knowledge ⁠
🟡 During reading - by looking for important information like vocabulary words and our 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why) ⁠
🔴 After reading - by reflecting on what we read and targeting all 5 levels of cognitive processing. ⁠
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We've found that we can integrate this routine into any lesson where students are reading a passage, and it transformed our comprehension instruction. ⁠
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⁠We encourage you to try the before reading, during reading, and after reading routine with your students this week! Comment below and let us know how it goes!

We've been talking recently about students who are close, but not fully proficient in literacy. ⁠⁠The students who aren'...
03/03/2026

We've been talking recently about students who are close, but not fully proficient in literacy. ⁠
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The students who aren't thriving in the classroom, but a full intensive intervention program doesn't feel like a fit either. ⁠
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We used to get really stuck when trying to support these students, because we didn't feel like we had a clear pathway on how to best help them. ⁠
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Everything changed when we started implementing simple literacy routines like this fluency routine. ⁠
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We start with a passage. This can be from their classwork, authentic text, or something high-interest. Then, we will have them practice breaking sentences into the subject (who/what), predicate (did what), and adverbial (when, where, why, how). ⁠
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This helps them break the sentence into meaningful parts (which also supports comprehension!) that match the natural cadence in which we speak. ⁠
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Because reading that sounds like spoken language sets a stronger foundation for comprehension. 💪 ⁠
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03/03/2026

Vocabulary instruction used to feel like an extra component we needed to add on top of our other literacy tasks. ⁠
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That is, until we shifted how we thought about vocabulary.⁠
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Instead of vocabulary feeling like another isolated task squeezed into literacy lessons, it became a simple two-minute routine that pulled multiple skills together at once.⁠
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👉 Categorizing.⁠
👉 Thinking about function and defining features.⁠
👉 Working through synonyms and antonyms.⁠
👉 Noticing shades of meaning or multiple meanings of a word.⁠
👉 Working with sentence structure.⁠
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And the best thing, it all happened inside one predictable structure. ⁠
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These routines can integrate directly into what you’re already doing. It’s not about adding more. It’s about bringing things together.⁠
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Check out the video to learn more about the vocabulary routine we integrate into our literacy lessons. ⁠
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I used to feel really overwhelmed when it came to supporting vocabulary in my literacy intervention lessons. ⁠⁠What word...
03/01/2026

I used to feel really overwhelmed when it came to supporting vocabulary in my literacy intervention lessons. ⁠
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What words were I supposed to pick? Besides looking up definitions (which never seemed to stick for our students), how was I supposed to teach these skills? ⁠
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These two simple literacy routines changed my entire outlook on vocabulary. ⁠
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Instead of memorizing the definitions from the dictionary, I had students rate their knowledge of words from the passage we were working on. ⁠
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Then, they'd define the words using a 4-part framework that targets:⁠
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➡️ Category⁠
➡️ Function, purpose, and defining features ⁠
➡️ Synonym ⁠
➡️ Antonym or shade of meaning ⁠
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If you've ever struggled with how to incorporate vocabulary into your literacy lessons, you're in good company! I encourage you to try these routines this week and see if they help. ⁠
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Tag a friend/colleague below that you think would like these routines too! 🫶

02/27/2026

Vocabulary is a skill that used to feel really tricky to incorporate into our lessons. ⁠
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What words were we supposed to pick? Besides looking up definitions (which never seemed to stick for our students), how were we supposed to teach these skills? ⁠
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Then, we found a routine that really seemed to work for our students. ⁠
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We’d pull a few words from our comprehension passages for them to define. ⁠
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Then, instead of memorizing the definitions from the dictionary, we’d focus on identifying the words’...⁠
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➡️ Category⁠
➡️ Function, purpose, and defining features ⁠
➡️ Synonym ⁠
➡️ Antonym or shade of meaning ⁠
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This not only made it feel more cohesive in our lesson but also allowed our instruction to be more effective. ⁠
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Check out the video to see this routine in action. ⁠
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02/23/2026

Whenever we talk about phonological awareness, we often get the question...⁠
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“Do we actually need to do this with our older students?” ⁠
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And we get it. With so little time (and often so much ground to cover with our students), we want to maximize every second of our instruction and get right into the reading and the writing. ⁠
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But what if we thought about literacy like we think about sports?⁠
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When we think about athletics, we wouldn’t just jump right into a soccer match or hop onto the softball field. Instead, you’d do some jumping jacks. You’d stretch. You’d get your body ready for what’s to come. ⁠
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We like to think of PA skills like that. ⁠
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These PA drills are a way for students to “warm up” their ears. They are an important part of the lesson (though we don’t want to take up too much time here, just like we wouldn’t do jumping jacks for too much of soccer practice). ⁠
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Check out the video for a glimpse at how we explain these “warm-up” PA routines to our older students. ⁠
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2821 S Parker Road
Aurora, CO
80014

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

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(303) 309-9135

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Why We Built This...

We believe that effective reading instruction should be accessible to everyone.

We work directly with students and families providing educational diagnoses such as dyslexia and dysgraphia in addition to research-based instruction to help get struggling students to grade level and beyond.

It’s awful watching a child struggle. You see the brightness, the creativity, but you worry that their love of learning will begin to dim or burn out altogether if something doesn’t change. You feel stuck because you’re not sure what to do next.

We get it. With all the information available out there, it’s hard to sort through what’s reputable from what’s not. And that’s where we come in.