Overview

From Research to Practice: Structured Literacy and the Path to Reading Success for All

Structured literacy follows an explicit, systematic, diagnostic, and sequential method. It is highly effective in teaching all students to read and is essential for students at risk for and with dyslexia and students who experience difficulty learning to read. This instructional methodology, supported by scientific, evidence-based research, also known as the “science of reading”, aligns with how students best learn to read and write. It integrates listening, speaking, reading and writing and emphasizes the structure of language across the speech sound system (phonology), the writing system (orthography), the structure of sentences (syntax), the meaningful parts of words (morphology), the relationship among words (semantics), and the organization of spoken and written discourse (IDA 2019b, 6).

Understanding these elements is crucial for effectively implementing structured literacy. However, just as important as what is taught is how it is taught – through explicit, systematic, and diagnostic instruction.

Connecticut’s definition of structured literacy, as described in Connecticut’s Frequently Asked Questions: Specific Learning Disability/SLD Dyslexia, aligns with nationally recognized frameworks and emphasizes the essential elements necessary for effective reading instruction. These principles and elements include:

Elements of Structured Literacy instruction

• Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Manipulating sounds in spoken words, including rhyming, segmenting, blending, and substituting phonemes. The most important aspect of phonological awareness is manipulating the smallest unit of sound at the phoneme level.
• Sound-Symbol Association/Phonics: Understanding how phonemes map to printed symbols, enabling decoding and spelling. As decoding and encoding are mutually supportive, it is important to provide instruction in both directions – speech to print and print to speech.
• Orthography: Recognizing syllable patterns, division rules, and common spelling conventions to support reading and spelling.
• Morphology: Identifying base words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes to support reading, spelling, and vocabulary development.
• Syntax: Understanding grammar, sentence structure, and word order to support reading comprehension and written expression.
• Semantics: Developing vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and awareness of discourse structures.

Principles Guiding Structured Literacy instruction

• Systematic and Cumulative: Skills are taught in a logical sequence, with continuous review and practice.
• Explicit Instruction: Concepts are deliberately taught with ample teacher-student interaction, including opportunities for practice with teacher provided corrective feedback.
• Diagnostic and Prescriptive Teaching: Instruction is tailored to individual student needs through ongoing assessment.
• Hands-on, engaging, and multimodal: Includes hands-on learning such as moving tiles into sound boxes as words are segmented and spelled, using hand gestures to support memory for associations, building patterned words with letter tiles, assembling sentences with words on cards, color-coding sentences in paragraphs, and so forth.

Because structured literacy is essential for students with dyslexia and reading difficulties, it is important to understand the nature of dyslexia and related reading difficulties. The following understandings underscore the importance of evidence-based instruction and interventions, and are reflected in Connecticut’s working definition of dyslexia, developed by the Connecticut State Department of Education, and in the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading (2018).