8/7/2024

The 3 Principles of Structured Literacy Instruction

Now more than ever, teachers are experiencing increasing pressure to accelerate learning and increase students' literacy scores, while at the same time, there is a national teacher shortage making this more difficult.

Thankfully, the science of reading is here to help. The science of reading is a huge body of multidisciplinary research showing exactly how the human brain learns to read. While the science of reading is not a curriculum, it does inform effective methods of instruction, specifically, Structured Literacy. This instructional practice focuses on literacy acquisition that makes learning how to read possible (and even fun) for 95% of students. This is a huge jump from the 34% of students who are currently able to read proficiently.

What Is Structured Literacy?

Structured Literacy is an approach to teaching reading distinguished by its systematic, cumulative, and explicit methodology. The International Dyslexia Association® (IDA) developed and trademarked this teaching method.

There are two critical hallmarks of Structured Literacy instruction:

• It must teach all the components that evidence has found to be foremost in ensuring reading success.
• It must employ principles that align with the necessity of each component.

Think of Structured Literacy as the in-class application of the science of reading. Often, programs that claim to be based on the science of reading cherry-pick the evidence to accommodate certain beliefs. This is why a term like Structured Literacy provides differentiation among reading programs and instructional approaches.

Structured Literacy Instruction: It’s Not Just Phonics

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the science of reading is that it is centered around phonics. While phonics is a large component of reading—and it is one that is taught through Structured Literacy—it is just one of many elements teachers must consider when working with students. It isn’t just about what skills educators should teach but specifically how to teach those skills. This is where Structured Literacy comes in.

Strengthening Reading Comprehension: The Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading proposes that reading comprehension is the product of decoding (or word recognition) and linguistic comprehension. This serves as a framework for understanding and identifying Structured Literacy instruction. Because inefficiency in one component may lead to overall reading failure, Structured Literacy instruction includes both the critical components and their underpinning elements, as outlined below. These components distinguish Structured Literacy as being informed by the science of reading.

The Simple View of Reading states that to fully develop one’s reading comprehension, one must develop decoding and linguistic comprehension skills. These two components are made up of multiple moving parts, which we’ll break down.

Decoding

Translating printed symbols on a page into their spoken equivalents is known as decoding. In other words, when we segment the sounds of the letters C-A-T and blend them to make the word cat, we are decoding. The ultimate goal of decoding is to free cognitive resources to focus on the meaning of what is being read. 

As students achieve fluent reading, decoding instruction remains essential only for students who are not fluent readers. The underpinning components of decoding are phonology, orthography, and morphology.

Phonology

Phonology refers to the speech sound system of a language. In English, we have 44 speech sounds called phonemes. This means phonology is solely related to oral language, not reading, but it is a key component in developing one’s reading skills. 

Early instruction in phonology and developing phonemic awareness can prevent reading failure later on. In fact, a student’s ability to detect, think about, and manipulate phonemes is particularly predictive of reading success.

Orthography

Orthography refers to a language's writing system. The English language consists of 26 letters that can represent 44 phonemes in written words. Decoding begins with an understanding that spoken sounds are represented by letters (i.e., the alphabetic principle or sound-letter correspondence). 

Proficient reading comprehension relies on automatic associations of sounds and letters. When students can read effortlessly, cognitive resources are available for them to focus on meaning—this is where students bridge the gap between learning to read into reading to learn.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the meaningful units of words (e.g. prefixes, roots, suffixes, and combining forms). Knowledge of morphemes facilitates decoding and provides a springboard for vocabulary development. As morphology combines phonology, orthography, and meaning, it bridges the gap between alphabetic reading and comprehension. 

The more a reader knows about morphemes, the easier it is to instantly recognize and comprehend the long words found in complex texts.

Linguistic Comprehension

The ability to derive meaning from words, sentences, and texts at a listening level is referred to as language comprehension. To derive meaning from words, the reader needs vocabulary, knowledge, understanding of sentence structures, and the ability to infer what the author is implying. That makes explicit, systematic, and cumulative instruction as important to the development of language comprehension as it is to the development of accurate and automatic decoding. 

The underpinning components of language comprehension include semantics, pragmatics, syntax, and discourse.

Semantics

Semantics is the meanings and relationships of words. A reader’s breadth and depth of vocabulary contribute to reading achievement. The primary goals of reading and writing are determining and communicating meaning, so it is incredibly important students understand the meanings of words and how they function within sentences. 

In addition, many words in English have multiple meanings, so it is important for the reader to determine the author’s intended meaning of a word within the sentence’s context.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics are the rules of conversations or discussions (e.g. eye contact, taking turns) and the use and interpretation of language in a particular context. Often called the “hidden curriculum,” it should not be assumed students understand the content of pragmatics nor that they will intuit this on their own.

Syntax

Syntax is the order and relationships of words in sentences as well as the structure of sentences in oral and written language. Learning syntax includes understanding the parts of speech and sentence structures that support reading comprehension and written composition. A student’s understanding of pronoun references, verb tenses, and subject-verb agreement is predictive of reading comprehension abilities.

Discourse

Discourse is the organization of spoken and written communication. A student’s proficiency in understanding words, phrases, and text at oral and listening levels is indicative of their reading comprehension and writing proficiency. Strategies to develop students’ discourse include comprehension monitoring, graphic organizers, question-answering and generation, cooperative learning, story structures, and summarization tasks. Along with these tools, students should also spend time developing their background knowledge through listening, reading, writing, and discussion-based activities.

All of the elements of decoding and linguistic comprehension blend together to make up a student’s reading comprehension skills. That’s why it’s important to take a Structured Literacy approach to teaching students how to read. It is imperative all of these components build on top of one another and work together to set students up for success.

The Core Principles of Structured Literacy

According to the International Dyslexia Association®, there are three principles that go into Structured Literacy instruction. Structured Literacy is defined by its systematic & cumulative, diagnostic, and explicit methodology.

1. Systematic & Cumulative: systematic means the organization of the material follows the logical order of language. The sequence begins with the simplest concepts and gradually increases in difficulty as students’ understanding deepens. Cumulative means each of these steps should build on top of the previous one.
2. Diagnostic: diagnostic refers to the way teachers understand and react to their students’ learning process. They must be able to individualize instruction (even in group situations) based on continuous assessment. These assessments can be informal (e.g. observation) or formal (e.g. standardized testing).
3. Explicit: explicit instruction means teachers are clear and direct when teaching students new concepts. It should not be assumed students already know things that have not been taught, and it shouldn’t be assumed students learn through exposure alone. Explicit teaching involves direct student-teacher interactions, and research has shown that incorporating multisensory teaching can support students’ learning as well.

Structured Literacy Is Proven To Lead to Student Success

Structured Literacy instruction is informed by the science of reading, which is the only proven way to ensure students can become proficient readers and confident learners across the curriculum. Although this instruction is beneficial for all students, it is essential for those who are at risk for reading difficulties.

By implementing the components, principles, and instructional practices that align with both the science of reading and Structured Literacy, administrators, teachers, and parents are assured all students will receive the multifaceted literacy instruction they need for reading and academic success.

To learn more about how to implement Structured Literacy, take a look at this webinar showing how to bring the science of reading into your classroom.