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What is structured literacy, and how can we use in the classroom?

In this blog post we are going to dive into what structure and literacy is and how you could use it in your classroom to develop your students’ reading skills much faster and in a more effective way.

Teaching English and specifically teaching reading is not always the easiest task, depending on your students first language or L1 Reading can be quite difficult as their phonics are different from the American or British phonics. An example of this would be Spanish students learning English saying words that begin with the letter S. Spanish students tend to start the letter with an E before the S because in their own language no word starts with that letter. 

image What is structured literacy, and how can we use in the classroom?

Specific reading skills needed in order to become proficient include phonetic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. (Perspectives in Education, Volume 29, Van Staden) 

So how do we prepare students to be able to read it in a way that doesn’t confuse them and they understand the separation from their own language L1 and the target language. 

In comes to structure a literacy approach, originally it was approached as a method for teaching reading skills to students with dyslexia, but over the years many ESL teachers have found that it is a proven method that actually helps students read and grow their skills faster. Even researchers agree that utilizing phonological awareness is a must in our everyday classroom activities. The importance of structural literacy comes from the base of an explicit instruction with an emphasis coming from the speech sound system (phonology). 

What are the main components of structured literacy?

  • Phonology
  • Sound symbol relationship
  • Syllables
  • Morphology
  • Syntax
  • Semantics

Phonology being the first and most important part of the structure literacy approach it is a study of spoken words sound structure. It is the practice of reading a word and dividing it into a sequence of smaller sounds. A great example of this is when we teach the alphabet. We’re not teaching letters, we’re not teaching writing, we’re teaching the sound each letter makes so that the students understand how to say each letter and move forward to combining the letters to make a word.

The approach

As ESL teachers, we try to always go with the easiest section of our teaching first trying to explain the basic concepts and progress towards more complex concepts within our teaching. making sure students understand to the fullest extent what is being explained to them. But the most important approach within structured literacy is the explicit instruction. 

It covers all concepts and rules that create a student teacher dialogue in a classroom making sure that it is not assumed the student already knows these concepts. Even as we progress in their level it is important to never assume they know these concepts to the explicit extent you must always as the teacher and educator to continue a student teacher interaction for them to fully understand and review conserves they may have forgotten or want to continue reviewing. 

The research does show that explanation with explicit literacy instruction and enough practice actually has a significant and positive result in students’ reading skills. So how can we achieve this in our classrooms? Teachers must give direct and explicit instruction as well as multi sensory activities that involve many aspects such as reading fluency war decoding syntactic awareness activation of prior knowledge and expansion of vocabulary knowledge. (Perspectives in Education, Volume 29, Van Staden).

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