What is structured literacy?

Where does the term come from?

The International Dyslexia Association began using it around 2014 as an umbrella term. Before that, teachers spoke of Orton-Gillingham, multisensory teaching, or the names of particular programs. The association wanted one plain name for the shared approach behind all of them.

Structured literacy began with students with dyslexia in mind. The idea since then is simple: the teaching that students with dyslexia need is good teaching for nearly every beginning reader. It just matters more for some.

What does structured literacy teach?

It covers the layers of written language, from the smallest sound up to a whole sentence.

How is it taught?

Four principles describe how. They matter more than any single activity.

• Explicit: the teacher states and models each concept. Students are not left to discover the code.
• Systematic: concepts follow a logical order, from easy to hard, with nothing skipped.
• Cumulative: each lesson reviews what came before, so old patterns stay sharp.
• Diagnostic: the teacher watches each response and adjusts. A student who misreads a pattern gets more practice on it before moving on.

The diagnostic part is the easiest to drop when a class is large. It is also what makes the approach work for students who struggle. It does not need a formal test. A teacher who notes, lesson by lesson, which patterns each student reads easily and which still cause errors is teaching diagnostically.

What does a structured literacy lesson look like?

A typical small-group lesson runs 30 to 45 minutes. The parts stay the same every day, which lowers the load on students' working memory.

1. Sound drill: students say the sounds for 15 to 20 spelling cards, old and new.
2. Phonemic awareness: blending, segmenting or swapping sounds aloud.
3. New concept: the teacher introduces one pattern with examples.
4. Word reading: students read single words, then phrases, using the new pattern and older ones.
5. Irregular words: one or two high frequency words, with the regular parts decoded.
6. Dictation: sounds, then words, then a sentence, which students check and correct.
7. Connected text: a short decodable passage, read for accuracy and then for meaning.

Is structured literacy the same as Orton-Gillingham?

No. Orton-Gillingham is one approach inside the structured literacy umbrella. It dates from the 1930s, when Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham developed a way of teaching students with severe reading problems. It is known for one-to-one teaching, a careful sequence, and multisensory practice such as tracing letters while saying sounds.

Structured literacy is the wider category. A whole-class kindergarten phonics lesson that is explicit, systematic, cumulative and responsive counts, even with no tracing or sand trays.

Does it need to be multisensory?

Not necessarily. Many structured literacy lessons use seeing, saying, hearing and writing together, and that is sensible: writing a word while saying its sounds ties spelling to speech. But the evidence that extra senses add value beyond explicit teaching is thin.

A 2021 meta-analysis by Stevens and colleagues looked at Orton-Gillingham interventions for students with word-reading difficulties. The effects were positive but small and not statistically reliable, based on few good studies. That does not mean the approach fails. It means the explicit, systematic parts are where the evidence is strongest, and tapping and tracing are optional tools.

Who is structured literacy for?

Every beginning reader benefits from it in kindergarten to grade 2. Students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties need it for longer, with more practice and more review. Older students who never learned the code need it too, taught at a faster pace with older-looking materials.

Students who already read well do not need to sit through patterns they know. A short check tells you where each student is, so the lesson starts at the right step.

How do you know it is working?

Look at three things every few weeks. First, accuracy on the patterns taught: can the student read and spell words with them, mixed with older patterns, at 90 percent or better? Second, transfer: do they decode new words with those patterns in a passage they have not seen? Third, speed: is reading the same kind of text getting faster?

If accuracy is high but transfer is low, the student may be memorizing practice words. Use fresh words and made-up words in review. If accuracy stays low after two or three weeks on one pattern, slow down, add more practice with fewer new items, and check that earlier patterns are secure. A short note after each lesson makes these patterns visible long before a formal test would.