Structured literacy is a method of teaching reading that is explicit, systematic, and grounded in how the brain actually learns to decode written language. It is the approach recommended by decades of reading science research — including the landmark findings of the National Reading Panel — and is now widely recognized as the most effective way to teach reading to all students, especially those with dyslexia or other learning differences.
At LearnUp Centers, structured literacy is the foundation of everything we do.
The Five Pillars of Structured Literacy
Structured literacy instruction addresses five core components of reading
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. For example, recognizing that the word “cat” is made up of three sounds: /k/, /æ/, /t/. This is a foundational skill — students who struggle with phonemic awareness almost always struggle with reading.
Phonics
The relationship between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). Phonics instruction teaches students the code of written language so they can decode unfamiliar words rather than memorizing them by sight. Structured literacy programs teach phonics explicitly and in a logical sequence — one concept builds on the next.
Fluency
The ability to read accurately, at an appropriate pace, and with expression. Fluency bridges decoding and comprehension — a student who has to labor over every word cannot focus on understanding meaning. LearnUp uses proprietary decodable chapter books and repeated readings to build fluency directly.
Vocabulary
Understanding the meaning of words — both spoken and written. Strong vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension, and structured literacy programs build vocabulary explicitly alongside phonics and fluency skills.
Comprehension
The ultimate goal of reading — understanding what a text means, making inferences, identifying the main idea, and connecting ideas across a passage. LearnUp’s program includes explicit comprehension instruction using research-based strategies like summarization and text structure analysis.
Why Structured Literacy Works
Where science meets practice
Structured literacy is grounded in what researchers call the Science of Reading — a body of evidence built over more than 50 years of cognitive science, neuroscience, and educational research. The science is clear: most children do not learn to read naturally. Reading is not an instinct. It is a skill that must be explicitly taught.
The brain’s reading network — particularly the left hemisphere pathways connecting the visual, phonological, and language centers — must be trained through systematic, repeated exposure to the connections between sounds and letters. This is exactly what structured literacy programs provide.
Research consistently shows that structured literacy approaches work for the vast majority of struggling readers, including those with dyslexia. They produce significantly better outcomes than whole-language or balanced literacy approaches, are effective across age groups from kindergartners to adults, and work faster than other approaches when implemented with adequate frequency and intensity.
What Makes a Program “Structured Literacy”?
Not all reading programs are created equal
A true structured literacy program has five defining characteristics: it is Explicit (every concept is directly taught, nothing left to discovery), Systematic (skills taught in a deliberate logical sequence, simple before complex), Sequential (moving from foundational to advanced in a predictable order), Cumulative (new concepts continuously integrated with prior learning), and Multi-sensory (students learn through seeing, hearing, saying, and writing simultaneously, strengthening the neural connections that support reading.
Structured Literacy vs. Whole Language vs. Balanced Literacy
Ending the Reading Wars
For decades, many schools used whole language or balanced literacy approaches — methods that emphasized guessing words from context, memorizing sight words, and reading for meaning without explicit phonics instruction. Research has consistently shown these approaches are insufficient for many students, particularly those with dyslexia.
Structured literacy differs from whole language and balanced literacy in one fundamental way: it treats reading as a code that must be explicitly taught, rather than a skill that emerges naturally from exposure to books. Where structured literacy teaches phonics explicitly and systematically, whole language approaches rely on guessing words from context or pictures. Where structured literacy treats sight words as phonetic exceptions to be understood, balanced literacy uses sight word memorization as a primary reading strategy. The research base for structured literacy is strong, supported by decades of neuroscience. The evidence for whole language and balanced literacy approaches is weak — and for students with dyslexia, these approaches consistently fail.
Who Benefits from Structured Literacy?
Structured literacy works for virtually all readers
It is especially critical for:
Students with dyslexia. Dyslexia affects approximately 1 in 5 people and is primarily a phonological processing difficulty. Structured literacy directly targets phonological awareness and phonics, making it the most effective intervention for dyslexic readers.
English Language Learners. Students learning English as a second language benefit from explicit, systematic phonics instruction that builds the language code directly.
Students with IEPs. Many students with learning disabilities struggle specifically with the phonological and decoding skills that structured literacy directly addresses.
Students who missed foundational instruction. Middle and high school students who were never taught to decode properly can make dramatic gains with structured literacy, regardless of their age.
All beginning readers. Research supports structured literacy as the most effective approach for teaching all children to read, not just those who struggle.
LearnUp’s Goal: Creating Readers, Not Just Decoders
Teaching kids to become beach readers
Most reading programs define success as decoding — the ability to sound out words. LearnUp defines success differently: a child who picks up a book because they want to. A student who reads on the beach in summer not because they have to, but because they can and they love it.
This distinction shapes everything about how LearnUp works. From day one, every LearnUp student is assigned specific reading goals — a defined destination, not just a starting point. Progress is tracked against those goals continuously. If a student falls off track, LearnUp identifies the obstacle and adjusts. The question is never just “how much progress did they make?” It is “are they on track to become a reader?”
LearnUp’s exit threshold is clearly defined. A student has achieved foundational reading independence when they have mastered the beginning through intermediate phonics system and can read at a 4th grade level and beyond. At this point — typically reached in 60 to 80 hours of instruction on average — the student has the foundation to continue learning independently. Advanced phonics concepts can be acquired through continued reading and other educators. The student is no longer a struggling reader. They are a reader.
This is what other programs miss. They measure gains. They celebrate percentages. When a district announces that 40% of 2nd graders made reading progress, LearnUp asks: who are the other 60%? Those are our students. The ones every other system has accepted as too hard to teach, too far behind, too complicated. In LearnUp’s experience, the students who struggle most — particularly those living with dyslexia or other learning differences — are not unteachable. They simply haven’t been taught the right way yet. LearnUp knows how to teach all of them to read. Quickly.
How LearnUp Uses Structured Literacy
We designed the most efficient reading program we could
LearnUp Centers delivers one-on-one structured literacy tutoring using the Tattum Reading Program — a multisensory, phonics-first curriculum developed over 40 years by reading specialist Steve Tattum. The program integrates the best practices of Orton-Gillingham, Lindamood-Bell, Wilson, and Slingerland with current brain research and proprietary decodable chapter books.
Language-based, not flashcard-based
LearnUp teaches reading through active segmenting, blending, and manipulating of sounds — not passive flashcard memorization. This transfers immediately to spelling and reading. Traditional OG programs teach individual sounds through 8 linkages, a process that can take 30 or more days just to introduce the sounds. LearnUp teaches all letter sounds in a single lesson, then reviews daily to embed them.
Active phonics board
Students make words on a magnetic or digital phonics board rather than passively reciting flashcards. Hands-on, tactile learning engages reluctant readers and builds the neural pathways that support fluency.
Engage with accessible aligned decodable books.
From day one, our students are reading from a chapter book written at a skill level they can actually read—building confidence and excitement for reading. Our proprietary, phonetically-aligned reading series for elementary, middle and high-school are deliberately written to reinforce the program concepts taught during the student’s tutoring session.
Stimulating the word form area of the brain
LearnUp’s approach is designed to activate the fusiform gyrus — the brain’s word form area — through systematic phonics, daily reading of meaningful literature, and daily repeated readings. When this area of the brain fires, students begin to recognize and retain words naturally and fluently. This is the neurological foundation of reading independence.See a daily lesson.
LearnUp is faster than other structured literacy programs
Most major reading programs — including traditional Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, and Lindamood-Bell — are effective but slow, often requiring years of instruction to achieve meaningful gains. The Tattum Reading Program was built specifically to accelerate results. By merging the language-processing methods of Lindamood-Bell with the OG scope and sequence, adding a hands-on phonics board, and pairing instruction with phonetically controlled chapter books, Steve Tattum achieved gains of 2-3 grade levels in two months.
At LearnUp today, the average student reaches foundational reading independence — beginning through intermediate phonics mastered, reading at 4th grade level and beyond — in approximately 60 to 80 hours of instruction. That is a fraction of the time required by most comparable programs.
Outcomes
Across more than 900 students served since 2015, LearnUp students average 2.17 grade levels of reading growth. Students who complete a full recommended program average 2.9 grade levels of growth — in approximately half the time of most major reading programs.
How a LearnUp Session Works: The Experiential Learning Cycle
Plus 1 Approach to Learning
LearnUp’s program is not a linear march through a curriculum. It is a continuous experiential cycle — assess, learn, apply, assess again. We build off the students current knowledge and add the next layer so that the student doesn’t feel overwhelmed but continues to grow day after day.
Step 1: Assess and place
Every student begins with a thorough intake assessment that identifies exactly what they know and don’t know. Based on this, each student is assigned a “Start” — their entry point into the program. LearnUp has five Starts, from non-reader to breakthrough reader. Not every student starts at the beginning. A student who already knows their sounds and can read simple one-syllable words doesn’t need to start at Bootcamp. They start where they are.
Step 2: Review and fill gaps
Regardless of Start level, every student goes through a thorough review of foundational concepts to identify and fill any gaps. In practice, almost every severely struggling reader LearnUp sees has weak letter sounds — even those who received prior phonics instruction. The review catches this every time. If there’s a gap, LearnUp fills it before moving forward.
Step 3: Teach forward with the 8-component daily lesson
Each LearnUp session follows a structured 8-component lesson plan that addresses every core reading skill a student needs to become fluent — sounds, syllables, words, spelling, fluency, reading, comprehension, and writing. Every day, a new concept is introduced or the current concept is reviewed and deepened.
The lesson is designed to move quickly from component to component. This is intentional and neuroscience-informed: rotating through different areas gives each neuropathway time to rest before returning, preventing fatigue and maintaining engagement. For students with ADHD — a significant share of LearnUp’s students — this pacing is critical.
Step 4: Read. For real. For a long time.
Half of every LearnUp session is spent reading aloud from a chapter book. This is unprecedented. Most structured literacy programs allocate a few minutes to reading. LearnUp allocates half the period, every session, from day one.
This is possible because of LearnUp’s proprietary decodable chapter book series — 16+ series spanning ages 6 through adult, each written to align precisely with the program’s scope and sequence. The books are decodable and they are true stories with real plots, characters, and themes students actually care about.
As LearnUp describes it: “From day one, our students are reading from a chapter book written at a skill level they can actually read — building confidence and excitement for reading. Our proprietary, phonetically-aligned reading series for elementary, middle and high school are deliberately written to reinforce the program concepts taught during the student’s tutoring session.”
LearnUp uses a technique called pressure release — tutor and student read aloud together — so students can apply what they’ve learned in a real reading context while the tutor listens and tracks exactly how the student is doing in real time. Reading out loud for half a session, every session, is not incidental to the program. It is the program.
Frequently Asked Questions About Structured Literacy
Is structured literacy only for students with dyslexia?
No. Structured literacy works for all readers, including those without any diagnosis. It is simply the most effective method for teaching reading — particularly for students who have struggled with traditional approaches.
How is structured literacy different from phonics?
Phonics is one component of structured literacy. A full structured literacy program also includes phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction — all delivered in a systematic, explicit, and multisensory way.
Engage with accessible aligned decodable books.
From day one, our students are reading from a chapter book written at a skill level they can actually read—building confidence and excitement for reading. Our proprietary, phonetically-aligned reading series for elementary, middle and high-school are deliberately written to reinforce the program concepts taught during the student’s tutoring session.
My child’s school uses balanced literacy. Should I be concerned?
Many parents and educators are raising this question. The reading science is clear that balanced literacy approaches leave many students behind, particularly those with phonological processing differences. If your child is struggling to read and their school uses a balanced literacy approach, a structured literacy program like LearnUp can provide the targeted intervention they need.See a daily lesson.
How long does it take to see results with structured literacy?
With sufficient frequency — 4 to 5 sessions per week — and a high-quality program, many students begin making measurable progress within weeks. At LearnUp, students gain an average of 2+ grade levels in under three months of intensive tutoring. Foundational reading independence — mastering beginning through intermediate phonics and reading at a 4th grade level — is typically achieved in 60 to 80 hours of instruction.
What age can structured literacy begin?
You can begin teaching children the foundational reading skills from a very young age. However, LearnUp works directly with ages 6 through adult. It is never too late to learn to read — LearnUp has successfully taught adults in their 60s to read for the first time.
What if my child has already tried other reading programs?
Many LearnUp students have tried one or more reading programs before arriving at LearnUp. Our reading program is specifically designed to accelerate results where other programs have stalled — by identifying exactly where a student’s gaps are and filling them systematically, rather than starting over from scratch.
Key Terms
Phoneme. The smallest unit of sound in spoken language. The word “ship” has three phonemes: /sh/, /i/, /p/.
Grapheme. A letter or combination of letters that represents a phoneme. The grapheme “sh” represents the /sh/ sound.
Decoding. Using phonics knowledge to read unfamiliar words by sounding them out.
Encoding. Using phonics knowledge to spell words — the reverse of decoding.
Phonological awareness. The broader ability to hear and work with the sound structure of spoken language, including syllables, rhymes, and phonemes.
Orton-Gillingham. An influential structured literacy approach developed in the 1930s by Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham. Many modern structured literacy programs, including the Tattum Reading Program, are informed by OG principles.
Decodable text. Books and passages written to align with a student’s current phonics knowledge — allowing them to practice decoding words they have been taught rather than guessing from context.
Dyslexia. A neurological learning difference that affects the ability to decode written language, primarily due to phonological processing difficulties. Approximately 1 in 5 people have dyslexia. Structured literacy is the evidence-based intervention of choice.
Fusiform gyrus. The brain’s word form area — the region responsible for recognizing written words automatically and fluently. Stimulating this area through systematic phonics and daily reading is the neurological goal of LearnUp’s program.
Ready to Get Started?
If your child is struggling to read — whether in first grade or high school, with or without a diagnosis — LearnUp’s structured literacy program can help. We serve students ages 6 through adult, in person at our San Francisco clinic and virtually, nationwide.
