Structured Literacy and Balanced Literacy

Structured literacy and balanced literacy have been hot topics as of late. There has been a surge of interest due to the emerging science of reading research. In particular, the way teachers have been trained to teach reading in the last 20 years has become scrutinized by a wide variety of researchers, advocates for students with dyslexia and passionate teachers. In the process, a “balanced literacy” approach has been criticized as a contributor to poor reading skills. This post hopes to demystify the terms structured literacy and balanced literacy and help you to understand the purpose of each in a comprehensive literacy program

According to the International Dyslexic Association of Ontario, structured literacy can be defined as an evidence-based instructional approach that fosters strong reading and writing instruction for all students. It is comprehensive, addressing listening, speaking, reading and writing. Structured literacy is necessary for individuals with dyslexia, but it is beneficial for all learners.  Structured literacy is characterized by what content is taught, as well as how content is taught. 

What and How is Content Taught in Structured Literacy

The content taught in structured literacy is phonology, sound-symbol association, syllables, syntax and semantics. The instruction is systematic and cumulative, explicit, and diagnostic. This means that the material takes a logical order, the instruction is clear and direct, and the skills taught are individualized and based on ongoing diagnostic assessments. This is important in the primary classroom when students learn critical foundational literacy skills.

Structured literacy is centered on foundational reading skills. While the skills and processes identified are very important, other aspects of literacy also need to be addressed and taught every day for students to learn how to read effectively and with comprehension.

One of the most important research articles to date is that of the National Reading Panel Report: Five Essential Components of Effective Reading Instruction (2000).

Experts summarized decades of scientific research on effective reading instruction and came up with 5 critical areas:

• Phonemic Awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension

The ultimate goal of reading instruction is reading comprehension. In order for students to achieve reading comprehension they must develop skills in these 5 areas. While these 5 areas can be taught in a small group instruction setting, students will not receive everything they need to achieve strong reading comprehension. Students need to apply the acquired reading skills and engage in lessons that further build these skills and greatly impact comprehension. Another thing to consider is that not all students come to school with an interest in reading. Many students struggle with attention or have other diverse learning needs that impact their desire and motivation to learn to read.

What is Balanced Literacy and How Does it Impact Literacy Learning?

Balanced literacy is not a program. When we refer to balanced literacy, we are referring to a framework that allows the teaching of all aspects of literacy that students will need as they learn to read, write and communicate.  In other words, effective literacy instruction needs a comprehensive approach.

Literacy includes oral language development, explicit reading instruction, writing instruction, and listening comprehension. This is the balance of balanced literacy. It is not meant to imply that every child should have just a little bit of each one to ensure the areas of literacy are all balanced. Every child is different and needs different things and different approaches. However, one thing is for sure, ALL students learning to read need explicit phonemic awareness and phonics instruction to set the foundation for reading.

The end goal of reading instruction is that students will be reading with fluency and full comprehension. To achieve this, students need to make meaning from the texts they are reading. Where instruction went wrong in the past was where comprehension became part of the beginning reading program and was prioritized over all else. Students were taught using levelled books (more on this later) and were encouraged to look at the pictures if they didn’t know how to read a word.

The problem with this method is that students may not have been given the tools to decode the word in the first place and so reading became a guessing game. In a structured literacy scenario, students are taught decoding skills and strategies first – eyes on text is the goal. Then, students are taught to use syntax and comprehension to confirm meaning.  This is not the complete picture of how children learn to read. Other skills and attitudes must come from other methods of instruction and exposure to books.

Other important aspects of learning to read include:

• background knowledge
• vocabulary development
• being able to encode (write) using orthographic mapping skills
• use oral language to develop syntax
• motivation to read
• understanding that authors have a purpose when they write a book

Literacy instruction must include aspects alongside small group reading instruction to fully develop the above skills that contribute to a student’s reading success.

The Components of a Balanced Literacy Approach to Teaching Literacy

1.  small group reading instruction and independent reading
2.  read aloud
3. shared and/or interactive reading
4. writing instruction

These aspects all lay on a bedrock of oral language. The more opportunities that students have to talk, share and ask questions, the more their reading and writing skills will develop.

Read Aloud

During read-aloud time, the teacher reads a picture book or a few chapters of a novel aloud to the class. This is a good opportunity for students to develop listening comprehension skills. Read-aloud provides time for students to see and hear quality mentor texts. Students will build background knowledge and increase vocabulary; two very important skills necessary for reading comprehension. Books are chosen that represent all learners in the classroom to provide a diverse and equitable learning experience. Read-aloud also provides students with exposure to different genres that they may not have thought about choosing on their own. Read-alouds also provide a great opportunity for students to listen to their teacher model expression and fluency. Students can learn about various authors and about ways these authors write which can help influence a student’s writing as well.

Shared Reading and Interactive Reading

Shared reading is a time when the teacher and the students read together.  This is when students can practice fluency and expression with the support of the teacher and others. Shared reading is usually done with emergent and early readers. Shared reading is usually done with big books, poems, sentences or other texts on a large chart paper, or a book or other text that is projected.

A book or text you are reading might have poetic rhyme.  If you are focussing on onset and rime patterns during small group or whole class phonics lessons, this would be a perfect way to apply this to reading in a supported manner.

Interactive reading is more lesson-oriented. High-interest picture books can be used to model pre-reading behaviors and strategies, during-reading strategies and after-reading strategies. The teacher will point out the title, and the cover of the book and ask students to make predictions.  As they read, the teacher may stop and ask a question to check comprehension and may even model what they are thinking about as they read (meta-comprehension).

Thinking bubble whiteboard used to model metacomprehension.

They might decide to focus on a comprehension strategy like inferring, connecting, summarizing, predicting, clarifying, visualizing etc. that students who have launched in reading have learned. This can be applied and modelled through interactive reading.

The vocabulary in these books will usually be beyond where the students’ reading skills are. It is important to pull out the pertinent vocabulary and pre-teach it before reading the book. This will help students make meaning (comprehend) the story better. During shared reading, teachers can ensure that students have the background knowledge they need to understand the story. These are all very important reasons that teachers use shared and/or interactive reading to help support explicit reading instruction.

It is important to emphasize that read-aloud, shared reading and interactive reading do not teach students to read.  They are very important supporting literacies that help to increase reading comprehension and bring reading joy to students.

Small Group Reading Instruction 

The National Reading Panel is clear: students need phonemic awareness and phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension to read and understand what is read. In order for children to learn HOW to read, they need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. When early or striving older readers are taught and given lots of opportunities to practice rhyming, syllables, letter and sound (phoneme) identification, as well as isolating, segmenting and blending sounds, reading skills and spelling skills develop and progress. These skills should be combined with opportunities to practice in context using decodable readers. Not all decodable readers are created equal. Look for ones that students can derive meaning from. This way, as they learn to decode and read, they can also access the meaning of the text; adding early steps towards reading comprehension.

Small group instruction is based on diagnostic testing. You will need to know what phonics skills students already know and which ones they need instruction on. This way you can target precisely what the student needs so that there are no gaps in learning. This is why decodable books are very effective for the instruction of beginning readers. Continuously monitoring students’ growth in skills will help to move the students forward.

Word work is the most effective when it is incorporated into the small group reading block. This is because specific word attack skills can be taught explicitly based on information derived from assessments. When word work is done in a small group and then practiced more in a center, student skills develop more quickly. Students learn spelling through phonics and patterns and practice spelling when they are writing. Having students write dictated sentences (encoding) during the reading block not only helps them to write proper sentences but also is a good formative assessment for reading development.

There is some debate on when students should be moved into levelled readers. As a teacher, you will need to make that determination based on the students in your class. However, it is important to note that students need to have a solid foundation of skills before moving on to new kinds of texts. One way to think of it is that decodable books are like training wheels. They have controlled vocabulary so that students can read using the skills they have been taught. Levelled books are patterned and may contain words with sound patterns that students have not learned yet. However, if they are far enough along in their skills development, they will move towards sounding out the words using the skills they have learned and/or using syntax or comprehension in order to tackle the new word. Many teachers see these books as transitional to “real reading” and give students a different level of support.

For a differentiated approach for many different skill levels, you can incorporate reading non-fiction with printing practice and comprehension in this one resource.

Writing Instruction

Reading and writing are inextricably connected.

In the younger grades, teachers model proper sentences, punctuation, and simple descriptive words. Students learn to build sentences, and then write sentences. As students develop, the sentences become more varied and their descriptive words are more personal and unique.  Students learn the elements of a good story which includes a beginning, middle and end as a framework. Students also learn about personal writing which can be like opinion writing or persuasive writing.

Writing anchor charts are displayed so that students can refer to them when they are writing.  I have modelled an entire story process from start to finish with classes and then published it in a book so that students could read it later.  Two effective ways to teach writing skills through modelling are teaching about the 6 Writing Traits (ideas word choice, sentence fluency, organization, voice and mechanics) and teaching using author studies. Find a post about Building a Writing Mindset here.

Small Group Writing Instruction

Small group writing can run much like small group reading.  I have written a short series of posts describing small group writing which are more detailed. You can read the first one in more detail here. But the gist is that students can be grouped for writing instruction in many ways. Kids love it when the teacher listens to their writing. What better way than to do it in a small group?  They can be grouped based on skill level and specific writing skills that need to be explicitly taught. They can be grouped based on the genre that they are writing. Sometimes it’s just a group to share their writing like an author’s circle.

Independent Writing

Independent writing is a time when students are thinking, creating, and writing on their own. It is a time when students use the skills they have learned to write on whatever the topic is or the skill being emphasized (ie. opinion writing). It’s important that students spend time talking about their ideas first (which I will talk about next). They can consult the person beside them if they are stuck or want to bounce an idea off of someone. If you have set up a Writer’s Workshop structure in your room, independent writing time comes right after your mini-lesson and before students share their writing aloud.

Oral Language

Oral language is probably the most underrated and underutilized of all of the components of a comprehensive literacy program. Oral language development from very young children to older students is a key element in helping students understand language.  Some of the best-modelled lessons that demonstrate oral language skills are poetry, classroom meetings, author’s circle, and drama.  Teachers often get hung up with having students write everything. Practicing focused oral language is highly effective in actually improving writing and reading!  The best piece of advice someone gave me years ago when I mentioned that my students needed help in their sentence writing was to insist they answer you in full sentences. Eureka! That did it!  It was amazing.  If you notice, “talk written down” is a stage of development roughly around the end of 1st grade and into 2nd grade. So, if they are writing what they are saying, why not work on what they are saying?

Interactive oral language activities include partner work like think pair share, and partner activities of all sorts where partners share each other’s ideas with the class. Active listening builds listening comprehension and has a direct correlation to reading and writing development. (Burkins and Yates, 2021) Learning to paraphrase is a great way to promote communication skills like listening and accountability.

Students can be independently practicing their oral language skills by engaging in such things as think- pair-share, reading their stories aloud, writing speeches and practicing speaking skills. Using technology like an iPad to record their writing or speeches is an excellent way for students to self-assess their oral language skills.

As you can see, reading, word work and writing all work together and this is why a balanced approach to literacy instruction is important.

Literacy learning is a multifaceted and social process. It involves explicit instruction in reading, writing, oral language and word work skills. It involves lots of practice and just the right balance depending on the skills the students in front of you need and based on your ongoing assessments.

In the world beyond school, it is important that students feel confident in reading, writing and communication skills.  Balanced literacy does NOT mean phonemic awareness and phonics are not taught and monitored. It means all students are taught to read explicitly and are exposed to many other supporting literacies to develop a well-rounded and capable reader who loves reading!

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