phonics is a critical piece, but it's not the ONLY thing a kid needs to be a strong reader kids need to know the phonics skills with ease. that allows them to focus on comprehending the text so what should you concretely do after phonics? build reading fluency via repeated reading 1. use decodable texts (texts that mostly follow the phonics rules and use Heart Words that the student has learned) 2. model how to read the text to the child. this teaches them the prosody and flow of how it should sound 3. (optional) echo reading. teacher reads a line, student reads the line back 4. have the student read it independently a couple more times, giving feedback on their reading 5. assess their comprehension. it's a good signal of whether the repeated reading worked. it allows them to comprehend texts that they may not have been able to with only one cold read