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Nine More Days to Register: Phase 2 of LETRS Professional Learning
Registration for the second LETRS cohort of the Kentucky Reading Academies will be open until Aug. 31. If you haven’t done so yet, please register now! If you’ve already registered, please forward this email to five colleagues or friends you think would benefit from participating.
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has an exciting partnership that brings the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) professional learning to educators across the Commonwealth called the Kentucky Reading Academies. This course of study was chosen because of its demonstrated success on a national scale in bringing significant increases in literacy achievement.
The Kentucky Reading Academies is a comprehensive no-cost professional learning opportunity open to all K-5 public school educators.
Two different courses are being offered through the Kentucky Reading Academies: LETRS for Educators and LETRS for Administrators. Interested educators can join the Kentucky Reading Academies by registering for the course that pertains to their role:
More than 1,800 Kentucky educators and administrators are completing the LETRS professional learning in Phase 1. On a survey of Phase 1 participants, 433 responded, and 95% noted that the information they are learning through the LETRS professional learning is new information. A further 95% stated the learning is relevant to their role, and 93% of the respondents said the learning has helped them to better meet the diverse reading needs of their students.
NOTE: Phase 1 participants will not need to register for Phase 2, as they are already enrolled in the professional learning.
What is Structured Literacy?
The goal of Kentucky’s Senate Bill 9 (2022), the Read to Succeed Act, is to ensure "all children learn to read well before exiting grade three (3) and that all middle and high school students have the skills necessary to read complex materials in specific core subjects and comprehend and constructively apply the information, " (KRS 158.791(1)).
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) is required to support “local school districts in the identification of professional development activities, including teaching strategies to help teachers in each subject area to: 1. Implement evidence-based reading, intervention, and instructional strategies that emphasize phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and connections between reading and writing acquisition, and motivation to read to address the diverse needs of students,” (KRS 158.791(2)(c)).
When understanding how the brain learns to read, educators implement Structured Literacy (SL) practices to ensure that all students are supported in becoming skilled readers.
Structured Literacy Defined
Structured literacy is an approach that emphasizes highly explicit and systematic teaching of all essential components of literacy. These components include foundational skills (e.g., decoding, spelling) and higher-level literacy skills (e.g., reading comprehension, written expression). Structured literacy also emphasizes oral language abilities essential to literacy development, including phonemic awareness, sensitivity to speech sounds in oral language and the ability to manipulate those sounds (Spear-Swerling, 2019).
Structured literacy prepares students to decode words explicitly and systematically. This approach not only helps students with dyslexia, but there also is substantial evidence that it is effective for all readers (IDA, 2021).
Structured Literacy Is ...
Structured literacy practices are explicit and systematic in nature. Concepts are taught using direction instruction and modeled when necessary. The elements of language are taught sequentially with intensive practice and continual feedback.
Reading instruction using the structured literacy approach should be cumulative, that is, lessons build on previous knowledge, moving from simple to more complex concepts. Frequent assessments and progress monitoring are used to inform instruction and corrective feedback is provided.
During each lesson, meaningful interactions with language must occur and students are given multiple opportunities to practice tasks. Lesson engagement is crucial during teacher-led instruction and independent practices are monitored. Lastly, a supportive learning environment where student effort is encouraged allows students to gain the self-confidence and motivation needed to gain mastery of skills.
Structured Literacy Is Not ...
Instruction that is not aligned with structured literacy does not place emphasis on phonemic awareness, decoding and spelling, even for beginning readers. There is no systematic grapheme-phoneme level approach for initial instruction and emphasis may be placed on larger units, such as word families, before students are ready (IDA, 2019).
In early grades, children generally read predictable or leveled texts, which often contain many words that children cannot decode and tend to encourage guessing based on pictures or sentence context rather than facilitating application of previously learned phonetic patterns in decodable texts. Leveled or predictable texts are common in some interventions, even for poor readers (Clay, 1994; Fountas & Pinnell, 2009).
Instructional time spent in direct teacher-student interaction may be limited, leaving children to work in cooperative groupings or independently instead of engaging in direct instruction from the teacher (IDA, 2019). When children read texts, even with a teacher, inaccuracies in decoding may be overlooked in the belief that errors are unimportant if they do not change the meaning (reading horse for pony). However, inaccurate reading prevents students from building fluency and often causes an overreliance on pictures. Relying on context does not work well for more advanced texts and can become a difficult habit to break (Floorman et al., 2016).
More information about structured literacy can be found on the KDE Early Literacy webpage.
Please reach out to Ashley Hill, assistant director of early literacy, with any questions.
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