Structured Literacy is a teaching method focused on systematic, explicit instruction in reading and language. It's especially useful for students with dyslexia, combining listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills to improve literacy.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), approximately 3.3 million students were homeschooled in the United States as of 2023, representing roughly 6% of the school-age population. A peer-reviewed study published in Peabody Journal of Education found that homeschooled children are typically well-adjusted socially and score above average on measures of social skills, emotional development, and daily living skills (Richard Medlin, 2013).
What is structured literacy?
Structured Literacy is a term from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) created in 2016. It refers to teaching methods backed by research, following the Science of Reading. This includes programs like Orton-Gillingham that help students learn clear, step-by-step strategies for decoding and spelling. It covers listening, speaking, reading, and writing while focusing on language structure. The instruction is explicit, systematic, cumulative, diagnostic, and often multisensory, engaging different learning styles.
The six elements of structured literacy
Structured Literacy includes six key parts:
- Phonology: This is about the sounds in spoken language, including phonemic awareness.
- Sound-Symbol Association: This teaches how sounds connect to letters and spelling.
- Syllables: Here, kids learn the six types of syllables in English to help decode longer words.
- Morphology: This focuses on word parts like prefixes and roots that build vocabulary.
- Syntax: This teaches sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation for better writing and understanding.
- Semantics: This develops vocabulary and comprehension strategies. All these parts work together to create a complete learning system.
Why it works for struggling readers
Many reading struggles, like dyslexia, come from issues with phonological processing. Structured Literacy directly targets these problems with strong phonemic awareness training, which struggling readers often need. Unlike methods that hope kids will pick up reading naturally, Structured Literacy teaches everything explicitly. A study in 2014 showed that students in Structured Literacy programs improved nearly four times more than those in Guided Reading groups. The IDA emphasizes that while this method helps all students, it's vital for those with dyslexia. Traditional approaches like balanced literacy just don't work well for kids with reading differences.
Homeschool curriculum options
If you’re homeschooling, you have great options for Structured Literacy.
- All About Reading: This program uses multisensory methods with games and letter tiles, making it easy for parents and fun for younger kids.
- Logic of English: It covers everything in language arts, including phonics, spelling, grammar, and handwriting.
- Barton Reading and Spelling: This is fully scripted for teaching dyslexia intervention at home.
- PRIDE Reading Program: This award-winning program needs no parent training. All these programs use the Orton-Gillingham approach, which is proven effective through research.
The bottom line
Structured Literacy applies years of research on how we learn to read. While it was designed for struggling readers, it benefits all students by covering everything thoroughly. With 38 states passing laws for evidence-based reading instruction, the shift from balanced literacy is happening fast. The good news for homeschool families is that there are several excellent Orton-Gillingham-based programs available that don’t need special training. Whether your child is just starting to read or has trouble with decoding, Structured Literacy offers the clear, systematic instruction that research shows works best.
