Welcome to Nellodee
A teacher-first tool for creating personalized, phonetically-controlled reading materials, designed to be printed, not scrolled.
What is Nellodee?
Nellodee is a tool for teachers, tutors, and parents who teach reading using structured literacy or phonics-based methods (like UFLI, Wilson Reading, or Waseca). It helps you:
- Assess a student's current phonics knowledge
- Generate word lists, sentences, and stories that match exactly what the student has been taught
- Create print-ready worksheets in seconds
- Track progress over time and build a personalized reading profile
The content Nellodee creates is meant to be printed and handed to kids. This isn't screen time for students. It's a preparation and planning tool for the adults who teach them.
What's new in v3
If you used an earlier version of Nellodee, here's what changed.
Everything in one place: word lists, sentences, stories, and text checking are now a single Worksheet Builder instead of separate tools.
Worksheet templates: Once you've generated word lists, sentences, stories, you can select different templates such as Bingo, Roll and Read, Illustrated Stories, 4 in a Row, Fluency Checks, and more. It's taking the same content and placing them in different activities. Feedback from kiddos are "more games please," and this new version delivers. Each template has its own settings for font size, key concept highlighting, and including teacher notes.
More control over what gets generated for each student: student profiles, assessments, and progress tracking all existed before, but v3 makes them more powerful and easier to use. You can now mix and match concepts across lessons, override individual assessment results, manually add focus areas, and edit sight word lists, all from one place.
Why Personalized Content Matters
Research consistently shows that reading instruction works best when it meets students exactly where they are. When a child is asked to read words that contain phonics patterns they haven't learned yet, it creates confusion and guessing habits that are hard to break later.
Nellodee solves this by tying every piece of content to a specific curriculum scope and sequence. When you tell Nellodee a student is on Lesson 14 of UFLI, it knows exactly which sounds and patterns they've been taught, and generates content that uses only those patterns, plus any sight words they've encountered.
But here's what makes Nellodee especially powerful: you're not locked into the sequence. Real students don't progress in a straight line. A child might be solid on silent-E words (Lessons 54–58 in UFLI) but still confuse b and d, a foundational concept from Lesson 17. With a traditional workbook, you'd have to choose: practice what they know, or go back to the beginning.
Nellodee lets you do both at once. You can mix and match any combination of concepts (practicing b/d discrimination using silent-E words, for example), so remediation doesn't mean regression. Students work at the level they've earned while you target the specific gaps that need attention.
Builds Confidence
Students can decode every word on the page. No guessing, no frustration.
Targeted Practice
Work on any gap without throwing out everything the student already knows.
Shows Progress
Assessments and snapshots let you see mastery grow over time.
How Nellodee Uses AI and Why It's Different
Yes, Nellodee uses AI to generate stories and sentences. But it doesn't just hand you whatever the AI spits out and call it a day.
After AI generates content, Nellodee automatically analyzes every word against a phonogram database. It then:
- Flags "tricky" words: words that contain patterns the student hasn't learned yet, so you can decide whether to keep or replace them.
- Highlights key concept words: words that showcase the specific phonics pattern you're practicing, so students can see it in context.
- Marks sight words: irregular or high-frequency words that students are expected to recognize by memory.
Word lists don't use AI at all. They're generated algorithmically from a curated word database, so the output is fully deterministic and phonetically precise.
Bottom line: Nellodee isn't a pretty front end to ChatGPT. The AI is one tool in a pipeline. Every output is verified, annotated, and designed to give you transparency about exactly what your student is being asked to read, and why.
The Core Tools
Worksheet Builder
Build structured, print-ready worksheets from a library of templates. Pick the phonics concepts you want to practice (the sh sound, consonant blends, b/d discrimination, whatever your student needs) and Nellodee generates content that targets exactly those patterns:
- Word lists: decodable words matched to the student's level, grouped by key concept
- Sentences & stories: AI-generated with phonetic controls applied; tricky words are automatically flagged so you can decide what to keep
- Worksheet templates: illustratable stories, bingo, sentence strips, and more; toggle teacher notes, key concept highlights, font sizes, and word formatting per template
- Text checker: paste in any existing text and see which words practice your target concepts and which contain patterns the student hasn't learned yet
You can also fine-tune exactly which patterns to include. For example, limit blends to just R-blends by typing CR~. Click the ? in the pattern field for a full reference.
Once your worksheet looks right, hit print. No reformatting in Word, no copying into Google Docs.
Student Profile & Assessment
Each student gets a profile that stores their phonics history and drives personalized content. Go to Students → All Students → Add a Student to get started.
Two ways to set a student's level:
- Manual snapshot: If you already know where a student is, check off the lessons they've mastered. Nellodee automatically targets the first unchecked concept in the sequence for new content.
- Phonics assessment: Run a structured assessment (UFLI or Core Phonics format) right in the app. Print the student and teacher sheets, then tap to mark each word as correct, mispronounced, or unknown. Click Analyze when done. Nellodee maps the results against the curriculum and produces a Curriculum Mastery Snapshot automatically.
After the assessment, the Phonetic Filters tab shows exactly which concepts Nellodee will target for that student. You can override individual results (e.g., if the student was distracted), manually add concepts like CCVC blends, or edit the sight word list. Hit Save All and every worksheet you generate for that student will use these filters automatically.
Student profiles also store interests (dinosaurs, soccer, outer space), and stories and sentences are written around these topics when possible.
Tracking & Updating a Student's Profile
Once a student has a profile, select them when generating worksheets and their phonetic filters load automatically. You can also add a Progress Monitoring worksheet, a pen-and-paper tracking sheet where you note which words the student read and which ones they struggled with.
After saving a worksheet, a Monitor button appears. Click it to open a word-by-word view of the entire activity. Tap a phoneme to mark it as unknown; tap the line beneath a word to indicate the student knew the sounds but couldn't blend them. Use Check Rest to mark the remainder of a section at once, and add any notes in the student notes field.
Updating the student's curriculum snapshot:
- Go to the student's page and click Create New Snapshot.
- Select which activities to include (e.g., all activities from the past month).
- Nellodee generates an updated mastery snapshot, shows you the proposed changes to the phonetic filters, and lets you edit before saving.
- All future activities for that student will use the updated filters, so practice stays targeted and moves forward with the student.
Tip: You can always edit phonetic filters manually from the student's Phonetic Filters tab. For example, add DR and TR blends if you know that's what needs work next, regardless of what the assessment showed.
Built for Paper, Not Screens
Nellodee is intentionally designed as a tool for educators, not students. Kids don't log in to Nell. They don't interact with an app. They sit down with a piece of paper (a printed worksheet, a word list, a short story) and they read.
This is a deliberate choice. Structured literacy research supports focused, distraction-free reading practice. A printed page is quiet. It doesn't push notifications. It doesn't auto-advance. It puts the student in charge of the pace, and it keeps the teacher in the loop.
Nellodee handles the part that used to take hours (finding or creating phonetically appropriate material), so teachers can spend more time actually teaching.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to get started?
New to Nell? Run your first assessment to build a student profile, or jump straight into the worksheet builder.
Have a question not answered here? Contact us.