What is Structured Literacy?

Have you heard the term Structured Literacy? What exactly is structured literacy? 

I’m so glad you asked! Let’s explore what it means and why it’s an important to know about it.

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What is Structured Literacy?

Structured literacy refers to a specific way or method in which literacy skills and strategies are taught using explicit, systematic, cummulative, and diagnostic teaching. What exactly do I mean by all these big terms? Let’s break each of them down.

1. Explicit Teaching: Explicit teaching means that we are direct in how we teach skills and strategies. We don’t assume that our learners will just figure it out. I like to say explicit teaching means skills are taught, not just caught.

We can teach explicitly by:

• modeling the skill and explaining how and why it works.
• letting learners practice the skill with our support and immediate feedback {also known as guided practice}.
• giving learners time to process and learn the information as they see it, hear it, and touch it {also know as multi-sensory teaching}.

2. Systematic Teaching: Systematic teaching means our teaching is organized in a logical way that helps our learners understand the concepts. The instruction needs to “filter, categorize, and prioritize the information for them.” {credit: Reading Horizons At Home}

We can teach systematically by:

• breaking down complicated processes step-by-step.
• starting with easier concepts and moving to harder concepts.
• teaching the most commonly used skills and concepts first and moving gradually less used ones. {For example, teaching the sound of a common letter like m before we teach z.}

 

 

3. Cumulative Teaching: Cumulative teaching means that our teaching constantly mixes in review concepts that have been learned previously. It’s almost like teaching in layers, if that makes sense.

We can teach cumulatively by:

• asking learners to remember something they learned in a previous lesson.
• layering new concepts on top of older concepts.
• mixing in older concepts with newer ones, like when you mix in older flashcards into the new pile.

 

4. Diagnostic Teaching: Diagnostic Teaching sounds scary, but it really isn’t. It just means that we use what we observe about our learners to guide our teaching.

We can teach diagnostically by:

• observing learners as they read to see what skills and strategies they are or aren’t using yet.
• looking at learners’ spellings in their writing.
• giving an assessment for certain skills.

Whether you teach in the classroom or at home, two FANTASTIC curricula that meet the standards of structured literacy are All About Reading and All About Spelling. I HIGHLY recommend both of them.

 

The Elements of Structure Literacy

Now that we’ve talked about the kind of teaching, let’s talk about what to teach with structured literacy. I won’t jump into too much detail within each element listed below because that’s what this entire series will be about.

You can click the images or links below to discover more in this series.

 

1. Phonology – The ability to hear and manipulate big sounds {like syllables} and small sounds {phonemes} in words as they are related to reading and spelling. You might also enjoy my post about understanding the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics.

2. Sound-Symbol Association – Helping learners make the right connections between letters and their sounds so they can apply these skills to reading and spelling…also known as the Alphabetic Principle.

3. Syllable Instruction – Understanding how to read and spell words with more than one syllable. This includes teaching the six syllable types.

4. Morphology – Understanding the smallest units of words that have meaning. Think prefixes, inflected endings, suffixes, and root words.

5. Syntax & Semantics – Teaching the word order in sentences and the meanings of words, such as homophones.

 

Structured Literacy isn’t just for struggling readers.

Lastly, but not least, one shift we all need to make is that this kind of teaching is not just for our struggling readers. Yes, it’s PERFECT for struggling readers, but ALL our readers can benefit from structured literacy.

The English language is an alphabetic language, and it’s actually more predictable than most people think. There’s not a strong enough reason to ignore this fact and leave it up to chance for our learners to figure it all out on their own.

Yes, a small percentage of our learners may figure out how to “crack the code” without direct instruction, but the majority of our learners do not. Structured literacy helps all our learners develop a strong foundation that can be built on for years to come.

 

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky