Dyslexia is one of the solitary learning disorders that include trouble in word decoding, penmanship, poor word recognition accuracy, and/or fluency, affecting people from all ranges of intelligence and cultural backgrounds. However, with the right support and instructional approaches, learners who are dyslexic can maneuver through the challenges it comes with and succeed in their academics. One of these instructional approaches that is increasingly proving beneficial for the achievement of this goal is structured literacy instruction. In this article, we delve into the significance of structured literacy methods in empowering dyslexic students.

Structured Literacy

Structured literacy is explicit and follows a systematic approach to teaching one how to write and read. On the contrary, the traditional approach, which is far less rote-learning dependent, divides the language ideas into small, manageable parts and sequences them for teaching.

Central to the approaches of structured literacy instructional techniques is that they recognize students with dyslexia most commonly present with challenges in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Building systematically on each of these elements, structured literacy allows development in literacy.

Key Components of Structured Literacy Instruction

• Phonological Awareness: Phonological awareness of dyslexic students has been realized to pose many challenges. Structured literacy instruction is designed to incorporate special activities that are essential for strengthening phonological awareness, which include rhyming and phoneme segmentation/blending with syllable segmentation.
• Phonics: Phonics is the basis for structured literacy. Students learn how to relate letters to sounds as they move from the simplest correspondence of letters to sounds to the more complex patterns found in phonics. Multisensory uses manipulatives with movement to increase learning in dyslexic students.
• Decoding: The student may be having difficulties with decoding even while able to read words aloud. It offers explicit teaching of decoding strategies like syllabication and word analysis in order to enable students to accurately decode words they find unfamiliar.
• Fluency: Fluency in reading develops the ability to read quickly and accurately, with expression. Further, structured literacy instruction may incorporate different reading tasks of repetition, fluency, and guided reading to increase reading fluency among dyslexic learners.
• Vocabulary: A structurally crucial element of comprehension and communication, literacy instruction features direct instruction in vocabulary, delivery of word meanings in context, and learners’ provisions with skills for independent development of new vocabulary.
• Comprehension: Students with dyslexia usually have a problem with their level of comprehension since they tend to read very slowly and hesitantly; decoding the words takes a big part of their working memory. Structured literacy instruction among many of comprehension strategies helps in understanding what is read by emphasizing prediction, summarization, and connection of the text or information that is read.

Benefits of Structured Literacy For Dyslexic Students 

Structured literacy instruction offers numerous benefits for dyslexic students:

• Improved Reading Skills: Structured instruction helps dyslexic students greatly develop perfect reading skills by creating support for the systematic addressing of the constituents of reading.
• Increased Confidence: Acquiring basic literacy skills by the dyslexic student basically develops sense which will basically develop and eventually permeate to increased success within the curricular environment.
• Reading Independence: Students are able to decode independently the given text because the structured literacy enables them to decode the text well.
• Long-Term Success: This ensures that the children develop skills instilled in them for lifelong learning, giving them the upper hand in any academic setting. 

Conclusion 

Empowering dyslexic students requires targeted interventions that address their unique learning needs. Structured literacy is an evidence-based, systematic, and comprehensive approach to literacy instruction that has been proven powerful for learners with dyslexia. Structured literacy approaches to ways of opening the door to full literacy have an enabling role that equips students with foundational skills essential for success. This would help in unleashing the potential of these students, thus enabling them to be successful in their academics and well into life.