Wooden puzzle with colorful, three-dimensional alphabet letters.

Structured Literacy

Students who struggle with key foundational literacy skills, including students with dyslexia, benefit significantly from structured literacy.

Blue outline of a person reading a book icon.
A young boy sitting at a small table with drawing materials, smiling and interacting with a woman sitting on the floor. The woman is wearing a yellow shirt and has long braided hair, smiling back at him. Various colored papers and a laptop are on the floor around her.

Structured literacy provides effective evidence-based literacy instruction for students with dyslexia and other students who struggle to learn to read. 

Structured literacy is direct and explicit, systematic, cumulative, intensive, multimodal, and focused on the internal structures of language. It has a scope and sequence, and a plan to cover all topics needed. Structured literacy progresses from the simple to complex, and common to less common patterns.

Structured Literacy is delivered in a diagnostic, prescriptive manner by well-trained teachers and academic therapists who use student errors to identify areas of need and to inform ongoing lesson planning. Topics are fully explained by the instructor and practiced by the student following a progression of gradual release, from I Do, to We Do, to You Do. 

Illustration of three alphabet blocks with letters A, B, and C in blue outline.
Illustration of hands holding an open book

Illustration of an ear with sound lines

Child in a classroom sitting at a yellow table with a female teacher holding an alphabet stencil, surrounded by colorful educational toys and equipment on a foam mat floor.


Structured literacy interleaves practice of prior concepts for ongoing review and builds upon prior knowledge with increasing degrees of complexity.

Structured literacy is multimodal, involving the simultaneous use of visual (letters), auditory (sounds), and kinesthetic (letter formation) pathways to enhance learning and retention of written language. It covers all aspects of written language, including foundational word recognition skills (phoneme awareness, phonics, syllable patterns) and language comprehension (vocabulary, morphemes, syntax, and ultimately, meaning). To allow a student to learn and retain information, structured literacy instruction should be provided with sufficient intensity, frequency, and duration. 

A typical structured literacy lesson includes: 

  • phoneme awareness

  • practice moving from letter combinations to the sounds they represent, and from a specific sound to the possible spellings of that sound in context

  • direct instruction of a new reading skill

  • application of those new skills to read words, sentences, and connected text (at a significantly higher number of exposures than neurotypical peers require)

  • spelling of words, phrases, and sentences

  • morphology–commonly used prefixes, bases, and suffixes that comprise most multisyllable language

  • age- and grade-appropriate vocabulary with high academic utility

  • grammar

Structured literacy as the evidence-based model for teaching struggling readers is based on a wide and deep body of knowledge derived from multiple disciplines including education, psychology, speech and language, and neurobiology. Structured literacy is also the most effective approach for literacy instruction for neurotypical readers, making it the ideal approach for use in all Tiers (1-3) in schools.

Related Readings

Cover of the book 'Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Fourth Edition' featuring a collage of a painted sunflower, sunflower seeds, and a crafted sunflower on a blue background.

Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills

Birsh, J. R. (Ed.) (2005). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Book cover titled 'Learning Disabilities: From Identification to Intervention, Second Edition' by Jack M. Fletcher, G. Reid Lyon, Lynn S. Fuchs, and Marcia A. Barnes, featuring abstract geometric design on a brown background.

Learning Disabilities:
From Identification
to Intervention

Fletcher, J. M., Lyon, G. R., Fuchs, L. S., & Barnes, M. A. (2007). New York: The Guilford Press.

Cover of 'Unlocking Literacy: Effective Decoding & Spelling Instruction, 2nd Edition' by Marcia K. Henry, with illustration of a hand holding a key and a book.

Unlocking Literacy: Effective Decoding and Spelling Instruction

Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Cover of the book 'Overcoming Dyslexia' featuring an open book illustration and authors Sally Shaywitz, M.D., and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.

Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level

Shaywitz, S. E. (2003).
New York: Knopf.