A step-by-step walkthrough of every feature — from your first observation to reports you can share with your district or board.
LiteracyLens is a free download on iPhone and iPad. No teacher accounts, no student accounts, no device rollout. The building principal is the user.
Search LiteracyLens on the App Store, or tap the download button on sorvia.io. Free to download — no credit card required.
The app includes 3 complete walkthroughs — full rubric, all 9 domains, 53 indicators — so you can evaluate the workflow before purchasing a license. No account or sign-in needed to begin.
When you're ready, purchase a Building License ($599/year, 2 users) and add more users any time at $99/year each to unlock unlimited walkthroughs, all 5 views, all export types, and all administrator accounts. Invoicing, purchase orders, and W-9 available.
Works fully offline. Conduct walkthroughs anywhere — no Wi-Fi needed. All observations and teacher records are saved directly on-device; no internet connection is ever required. A subtle banner confirms when you're in offline mode. See The On-Device Advantage → for how that's actually built.
The first time you open LiteracyLens, a short four-screen setup runs once and takes under two minutes. After that it’s gone — you go straight to the app.
Tap Get started — there’s no LiteracyLens account to create and no cloud sign-in step. The app runs entirely on the iPad your school already provisions through its standard sign-in process (e.g., Apple School Manager or your school’s device management); LiteracyLens doesn’t add a separate login on top of it, and no internet connection is required to open or use the app. Only the principal or an assigned administrator uses it — there are no teacher accounts and no student accounts.
Enter your school name and the current school year (e.g., 2025–2026). Select the grade levels you serve — this controls which grades appear in your teacher roster and Trends view. You can update all of this anytime in Settings.
You get 3 free walkthroughs with no credit card required. Tap Start observing to begin immediately. If you already have a license code, tap Enter license code to unlock unlimited observations right away. Trial walkthroughs are preserved when you activate — nothing is lost.
You can Import from CSV to load your full roster now, or tap Skip for now and add teachers before your first walkthrough. See Set up your teacher roster for the import format. New teachers can be added anytime from the Teachers tab.
Setup completes once, then you go straight to the Walkthrough tab. Setting up a second device (e.g., an assistant principal’s iPad) just means running this same one-time setup on that device — there’s no account to sign into, and each device keeps its own local data.
Before your first walkthrough, load the teachers you'll be observing. You can import a CSV or add teachers one at a time.
Open the Teachers tab and tap Import Teachers. Upload a CSV file or paste rows directly — one teacher per line.
Required columns (in order):
Ms. Rivera or Rivera, Jane). Names that contain a comma must be wrapped in quotes: "Rivera, Jane".K, Kindergarten, 1, 1st, First, Grade 1 — all normalized automatically.Sample CSV:
Name,Grade Ms. Rivera,K Mr. Chen,1 Ms. Kim,3 "Smith, Dana",2
Name,Grade) is detected and skipped automatically — include it or leave it out.Tap Add Teacher to enter individual names and grade levels directly in the app. Useful for adding mid-year transfers or new staff.
New teachers start as "Awaiting first observation." The Teachers view header tracks how many teachers haven't been observed yet — a built-in walkthrough to-do list for the start of the year.
A complete structured walkthrough takes under 15 minutes. Use the Rubric tab to review look-fors before entering a classroom, then switch to the Walkthrough tab to observe and rate in real time. The form guides you through a fair observation — lesson context, clear rating guidance, student evidence, a confidence indicator, and a follow-up plan — so a 15-minute snapshot is a coaching data point you can act on, not a formal judgment of the teacher.
Open the Walkthrough tab and choose the teacher. Record the lesson context — setting (whole-group, small-group, centers, 1:1), block (core vs. intervention), students present, and minutes — so the score is read against the conditions you observed. The card also surfaces the grade band's Tier-1 priorities.
Look-fors are filtered to the teacher's grade band (with a "show all K–5" toggle), and a built-in calibration guide defines each rating level so observers score the same evidence the same way.
Log what the instruction produced: opportunities to respond, the share of students actively engaged, accuracy of practice, and an optional student work/talk sample (a specific, factual example — e.g. what a student said or wrote, not your interpretation of it). A confidence indicator (Low / Moderate / Strong) reflects how much evidence you gathered and reminds you that Not Observed look-fors never count against a teacher.
Each domain has a free-text evidence notes field; generate the four-part coaching notes for your conversation; then set the follow-up — a return-visit date, the look-for to revisit, and one observable teacher commitment.
Tap Save Walkthrough — the observation is timestamped and added to the teacher's record, Dashboard, and Trends immediately. From the same screen, export a Walkthrough Summary: an editable Word document for the record and a print-ready PDF for the post-observation conference, both including the coaching notes and follow-up plan.
Each of the 53 look-fors is rated on a four-point scale. Unrated indicators are excluded from the score — only what you observed counts.
Score calculation: Sum of rated values ÷ (rated count × 3) × 100. Score thresholds: Needs Support <25% · Emerging 25–49% · Developing 50–74% · Proficient ≥75%
Every walkthrough generates a four-part coaching note — evidence-based, teacher-friendly, and grounded in the Science of Reading. Use it to anchor your post-observation conversation.
On flagged pitfalls: When you check a flag (three-cueing, round-robin reading, spelling lists without phonics, etc.), address it with evidence-based alternatives — not as a gotcha. The app surfaces the flag so you have the data; the coaching conversation is how change happens.
All 5 views are accessible from the sidebar on iPad or the tab bar on iPhone. The app opens to Walkthrough by default. A Rubric Guide button in the header opens the full look-for reference in a pop-up any time — it doesn't take up a tab of its own.
Live observation entry — select a teacher, log lesson context, rate indicators across 9 collapsible domains (with a one-tap Quick Look mode for the highest-leverage look-fors), capture student evidence and coaching notes, set a follow-up, and save or export a summary.
School-wide summary — KPI cards, a color-coded domain heatmap by grade you can click to expand into a ranked Gap Analysis with PD recommendations, and auto-ranked PD targets.
Month-over-month charts by domain or grade, plus a September baseline vs. current comparison with growth chips.
Per-teacher domain scorecards, implementation status badges, and a timestamped observation history.
One-tap packet presets (Weekly Principal Packet, State Compliance Packet) plus individual school-wide CSV/PDF types and a School PD Plan, and a per-walkthrough Word/PDF summary, ready for district reviewers, evaluation portfolios, and board packets.
53 teaching practices to look for, plus 11 common reading pitfalls to watch for, aligned to IDA Structured Literacy, the NRP Five Pillars, and Scarborough's Reading Rope. The rubric is consistent with the IDA’s 2025 revised definition of dyslexia, which elevates spelling and morphology alongside word reading.
| Domain | Indicators | Flag if observed |
|---|---|---|
| 🎯 Explicit Instruction | Modeling, guided practice, immediate responses, corrective feedback, I do/we do/you do, learning objective stated/posted (6) | No learning objective |
| 🔊 Phonemic Awareness | Phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme manipulation, linked to graphemes / connected to print (4) | Rhyming only |
| 🔤 Phonics & Decoding | Sound-spelling instruction, cumulative review, taught-pattern decoding, connected text, syllable type instruction, no picture/context guessing (6) | Unaligned leveled readers Three-cueing / picture guessing |
| ✏️ Encoding & Spelling | Dictation routines, pattern-linked spelling, sound-to-symbol mapping, writing words with taught patterns (4) | Spelling lists without phonics |
| 📖 Fluency | Accuracy, rate, expression, repeated reading, oral-reading feedback, appropriate text provided, teacher models fluent reading (7) | Round-robin reading |
| 📚 Vocabulary, Morphology & Syntax | Direct word instruction, student-friendly definitions, oral practice, text meaning, multiple exposures, morpheme-level word analysis, morphemes for word meaning, syntax in context, sentence combining/expansion (9) | Dictionary-only strategy Grammar in isolation |
| 💡 Comprehension | Comprehension strategies, text structure, text-based questions from literal to inferential, text-evidence discussion with follow-up questioning, grade-level text, student engagement (6) | Recall-only questions |
| 🧩 Intervention | Targeted skill match, explicit routine, practice volume, progress-monitoring link (4) | — |
| 🙋 Student Practice | High response rate, full participation, varied response modes, wait time, corrective feedback, teacher monitoring, responsive adjustment (7) | Passive seatwork Volunteers only |
Two kinds of export. After any single walkthrough, generate a Walkthrough Summary to discuss at the post-observation conference and keep in the teacher's record. From the Export view, pull school-wide data for district reviewers, board presentations, PLC meetings, and state compliance documentation. Exports that contain teacher names — handle per district records practice.
| Export type | What's included | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Walkthrough Summary | One observation, end to end — lesson context, per-domain scores and rated look-fors, student evidence, the four-part coaching notes, and the follow-up plan. The editable Word copy is for the record; the PDF is the conference hand-out | Word / PDF |
| Observations | Grade, observation count, per-domain scores, overall score per grade level | CSV |
| Teachers | Teacher name, grade, overall score %, implementation status per teacher | CSV |
| Trends | Month-by-month domain scores for growth documentation and board packets | CSV |
| Gaps | Grade, domain, score, and priority level for district reviewer handoff | CSV / PDF |
| School PD Plan | Ranked PD priorities, teacher-to-program mapping, cohort groupings, and a two-tier budget estimate | CSV / PDF |
Eligible funding sources: LiteracyLens implementation costs align to allowable uses of Title I (instructional improvement), Title II (professional development), and Title III (ELL support), as well as state literacy grants. Request a W-9, vendor sheet, or DPA from info@sorvia.io.
Need the exact column list for your data coordinator or evaluation system? See the full Data Export Spec Sheet →
Get the most from LiteracyLens with a consistent weekly rhythm — use the data to anchor coaching conversations, not just to generate reports.
Complete these steps before the last day of school to preserve a full year of walkthrough evidence and start the next year with a clean slate.
Staff data note: Observation records and teacher profiles are staff records. Follow your district’s records-retention schedule for how long to keep exported files. Contact info@sorvia.io for a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) if required by your district.
Reach out for help with setup, roster imports, procurement, or anything else.