You've organized your reading groups, but what does a structured literacy lesson plan actually look like? In this post, I'll walk you through the components of a structured literacy lesson!
What is Structured Literacy?
To start, structured literacy is essentially a rebranded and expanded Orton Gillingham. Orton Gillingham was originally used as an approach to support struggling readers, specifically those with dyslexia. Some hallmark characteristics are that Orton Gillingham lesson plans are structured and consistent, explicit, multisensory, and sequential. Orton Gillingham's emphasis is on decoding: specifically phonological awareness and phonics. So structured literacy expanded upon this approach by adding in the other critical component of reading: language comprehension.
Structured literacy is a systematic, strategic way of teaching the components of literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Therefore a structured literacy lesson should ideally include these elements in an intentional, sequential way.
Reading Intervention Lesson Plan
And now for the layout of the lesson. It is going to look like there are many parts to the lesson, but keep in mind that most of the sections take only 1 - 5 minutes to complete.
The beauty of this structured literacy lesson plan template is that it always includes a review of previously learned sounds and practice reading and writing with these sounds. This consistent spiral review builds success into each lesson and gives students plenty of practice to master these skills.
Sound Review
Open your lesson with a review of previous sounds and rules that you've taught. This can look like a quick "card drill" with your small group. Have the sound patterns written on flashcards, one sound per card. Hold up the card and have the students say the sound and its rule if applicable (i.e., the card says "v", students say "/v/" and "all words that end in /v/ are always followed by an 'e'"). This only takes about a minute. As students move to more advanced sounds and master their earliest sounds (like single consonants), you can drop some of the earlier sounds.
Word Reading Review
Provide a list of words that only have sounds that you've previously introduced. If you have not taught your students about the 3 different sounds that 'ed' makes at the end of a word, do not include any words that end with 'ed.' This section gives students an opportunity to apply the sounds that they've been learning, and it builds success into their lesson because it is using only previously taught sounds. Ten to fifteen words are all you need.
Spelling Review
Similarly to the word reading review, you will only use words where every spelling pattern has been previously taught. Five to ten words are all that are needed for this section. Here's a helpful routine for the spelling section:
Teacher says the word
Students repeat the word
Students say the word slowly, stretching it out so they start to hear the individual sounds
Students tap out the sounds in the word on the table (tap one finger for each sound) and say the number of sounds that they hear (Remember, a word may have less sounds than letters. "church" /ch/ /ur/ /ch/ 3 sounds, 6 letters).
Students say the sounds as they write the word on their page
Introduce the New Sound Pattern
Here you introduce the new phonogram (just one at a time). Students trace the phonogram on the table, repeat the letters and the sound it makes, and then write it on their papers while saying the letters and its sound.
Reading with the New Sound
Here students practice reading a few fully decodable words that contain the new sound. Be sure that any other spelling patterns in the words have been previously learned.
Spelling with the New Sound
Following the same routine from the spelling section above, have students practice spelling a few words that contain the new sound (again, fully decodable and all other sound patterns in the words have been previously learned).
Syllable Practice
Instruction with syllables is incredibly helpful for students who are struggling to decode multi-syllabic words. Explicitly teaching each type of syllable demystifies much of our English language. For example, understanding open versus closed syllables helps children understand when the vowel in the middle of a two syllable word is long versus short.
Irregularly Spelled Word Instruction
Now the above sections address the consistent rules of our English language, but we all know well that there are tons of exceptions and words that don't appear to follow these rules! Each day teach one or two irregular words (Orton Gillingham approach refers to these as "red words"). Take some time to review previously learned words as well.
When you introduce one of these words, do not have students sound it out. Don't focus on the sounds at all because the whole point is that the spelling patterns aren't following the rules and we do not want them confused! Instead focus on the letter names.
An example of one of these words is 'shoe.' The 'oe' typically says /oe/, but here it say /ew/. When introducing this word, you would say, "The word is 'shoe.' 'S' 'H' 'O' 'E' shoe."
Morphology
I love morphology. Understanding the meaning of word parts opens up a child's vocabulary. You know the meaning of 'break,' and that 'un' means 'not,' and the suffix 'able' means 'able to.' So boom now you know that 'unbreakable' means 'not able to be broken.' And it only gets better as kids dive into their Greek and Latin roots!
In a typical lesson, I introduce a prefix, suffix, or root word and then we practice applying it and discuss word meanings. The more affixes and roots the children have learned, the more word building you can do during this section.
Dictation
Dictation can be challenging for students, but it has so many benefits. Students are taking what they've practiced with isolated spelling words and applying it to sentence writing. Dictation requires students to listen to a sentence that the teacher reads and then correctly write the sentence on their page. It is important that these sentences contain only sound spelling patterns, syllables, and irregular words that have been explicitly taught. We want students to have meaningful practice.
Fluency
In the section above, students applied the spelling rules at the sentence level with writing. Now it is time to apply what they've learned to word reading beyond reading individual words. Using decodable sentences allows students to apply what they've learned in the above sections in a more meaningful way. If time permits, you can have a brief (very brief, this is sentence level after all!) conversation about the meaning of each sentence as well. Depending on the level of the child/children, you may be at a point where you can do decodable paragraphs or passages, as well.
Full Application!
Now many structured lesson plan templates end with the above step. The original Orton Gillingham approach typically went through the fluency step and then stopped because their focus was on phonological awareness, phonics, decoding, and encoding. However, students need to have time in books, reading, comprehending, and analyzing authentic texts. After you work through the structured literacy lesson plan, bring out the books!
The above steps give students the skills and strategies they need to successfully read the words on a page and write words on a page. Those skills are useless if they are never applied to authentic reading and writing opportunities.
When I finish a reading intervention lesson, I typically like to move into a novel study with nonfiction texts embedded into the unit plan. You can read more about this approach in an upcoming blog post!