Structured vs. Balanced Literacy

Something that your average person doesn’t know about would be the shift in literacy instruction in this country. Education professionals have landed themselves into two camps: Balanced vs. Structured Literacy.

Balanced Literacy

When people say Balanced Literacy, they’re often referring to a method of instruction that has been wildly popular in this country for many years now. The basic portions of this instruction essentially involved teaching students strategies for reading… such as looking at the first letter of a word and using the pictures, sentence context, etc. to determine the word. The leveling of texts were often done by using predictable texts at the earliest levels, where books would say “I see my dog.” and a picture of a dog, with the next page being “I see my fish.” and then “I see my hamster.” This is often without regard for phonetic patterns, grade level vocabulary, and complexity of text structure.

Now, what lots of people won’t tell you is that there could be some good things are balanced literacy! It’s absolutely important that kids are exposed to a variety of robust read alouds at a young age, and that portion of Balanced Literacy is a really good thing. There is SO much that goes into the reading rope of students, and phonics is not the only piece. We need to have practice with vocabulary, a variety of text structures, and language comprehension.

However, if students can’t decode (read) the words, they are swimming upstream! We might start with rigorous, systematic, and explicit instruction in the area of Phonics and word recognition.

Structured Literacy

This is where structured literacy comes in! Structured Literacy involves utilizing a research based scope and sequence to expose students to the patterns in words. We teach them the relationship between the sounds we hear and the letters we see. This helps students to decode a wide variety of words they read and then encode them in order to spell them accurately. There are many publishers out there that have produced wonderful programs to support teachers in this work, but it’s also just as important that teachers understand the reasons behind this approach. Once you learn what you learn, you can’t go back. When you see the results and difference it makes in the lives of students, you will find it’s a game changer!

Research shows us that 60% of students require this approach in order to learn how to read. This is why the United States is in a literacy crisis! Ensuring your learner has access to Structured Literacy in their classroom will be the key to moving them forward in their reading abilities.