Lalilo-A FREE Standards Aligned Literacy Program for K-2 Students, Teachers, and Parents

This is a sponsored post by Lalilo.  However, all reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.

Do you use literacy apps in your classrooms?  I have to be honest, when I was teaching first grade I really struggled to find the best literacy programs and websites that would meet the needs of all of my students and be something they could easily use without my help.  I would try countless programs to use during literacy center time or to enhance my phonics instruction, but I always ran into the same problem.  My students needed me to help them with the website or it would only fit their needs for a few days and then bam they were done with it.

That’s why I’m so glad to have found Lalilo, a completely FREE standards aligned literacy program for K-2 students.  This program not only is perfect for classroom use but is tailored to individual students needs that will constantly grow with them! This literacy program and kid friendly website would be the perfect addition to your literacy centers, phonics extension activities, tutoring sessions, or homework assignments.  I completely understand why they’re known as the best phonics and comprehension program out there.  The fact that it was created by former teachers gave me even more confidence to try it out.

What Is Lalilo?

Lalilo supports all areas of literacy including phonemic awareness, letter and word recognition, and reading fluency and comprehension.  All areas of literacy instruction that are so important to my first graders and to me as their teacher.  What I have fallen in love with most from this website for literacy instruction is that you can EASILY create your own class and assign individual lessons to each of your students.  That is instant and super simple differentiated instruction!  I couldn’t be more excited to share this with you all for that one fact!  I don’t know about you but I am always looking for engaging ways to differentiate my literacy instruction.

How Do You Use it With Your Students?

Once you set up your class and include all of your students names you can preview the different activities you want to assign to them based on their individualized needs.  Each category of literacy instruction is well represented and once you assign a lesson, it will continue to grow and change with your student’s progress. based on Lalilo’s algorithm.  That way, you can still use this program for students who need more practice with their beginning consonants and then challenge your students who need to be exposed to higher level thinking with their reading comprehension.  I am so happy to have found a literacy website that can be tailored to meet the needs of all of my students.  

What Do The Lessons Look Like?

Once students are assigned their lessons they can complete them at their own pace.  They travel through different “worlds” to complete all of their tasks and get complimented and celebrated along the way as they complete each one!  Lalilo uses easy to follow directions that students can listen to so they know exactly what to do for each task without any teacher support.  Individualized practice and independent learning at its finest.

The tasks that students complete will change based on how they are doing.  One of my favorite activities so far that I have tried out was for students to recognize short a words in a book. One of my daily word work centers has always been to hunt for spelling and word patterns for the week in students’ books.  This would add a whole new element to this skill and make things more exciting for my students.  Let them do the same task on an iPad or computer and things just get a whole lot more exciting and engaging! But, recognizing and identifying short a words wasn’t the last skill in this assignment.  Students then had to comprehend the book by answering questions associated with their short a words. 

How Would I Use This In My Classroom?

One of my favorite ways to use literacy websites and apps in my classroom is during centers.  I have certain centers dedicated to phonics websites and Lalilo would be added to the rotation.  Students would be assigned their lessons and can access them on their own during the day their at their tech center.  

Another way to use Lalilo with your students is to set up parent codes for students to continue practicing at home.  Instead of worksheets that would go home every night, Lalilo lessons could be assigned to each individual student and completed over the course of the week.  That way, each student is getting targeted literacy instruction that meets their needs and not any busy work.

As I continue to learn more about this program, I realized that it doesn’t just have to be used in schools.  Homeschool parents can also use this literacy standards-aligned program by simply choosing homeschool teacher when signing up for the free site!

It has always been a struggle for me to find free literacy programs that I can use with my students for the long haul.  I am guilty of signing up for free trials of programs to only be able to use for two weeks and then have to stop using because you have to pay for the rest.  That’s why finding Lalilo has been so beneficial.  It’s not only a free program that focus on differentiated instruction for standards based skills but it also provides easy ways to collect and sort classroom data.  Having access to that data is so necessary in order to create and provide meaningful literacy instruction to our students.  

If you would like to learn more about this program or sign up for FREE to start using today, head to their site to learn more!