Beginning in the 2023–24 school year, Falk Laboratory School implemented a structured literacy approach to reading and writing in Primary and Intermediate classrooms. In particular, many classes use a literacy curriculum called Fundations. 

To learn more about what structured literacy is, what it looks like in the classroom, and what led to Falk’s decision to implement it, we spoke with two key players who were instrumental in the implementation process: Katrina Bartow Jacobs and Michelle Sobolak. 

Katrina Bartow Jacobs is an associate professor of practice in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh and also serves as Falk’s research coordinator. Michelle Sobolak is an associate professor of practice in the Department of Teaching, Leading and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. 

What is structured literacy? 

“Structured literacy is a way of teaching students to read,” says Michelle Sobolak. “It’s an effective way to teach all students, whether they come in with higher beginning skills or less readiness in the area. It’s an explicit and systematic way of teaching all the components of literacy.” 

She adds that structured literacy is sometimes minimized to mean decoding—or simply reading words on page—when in fact, the approach includes more than that. 

“It’s also making sure that teachers and schools and students understand the trajectory of how they’re learning and building upon what they learned previously to learn increasingly difficult and higher order skills,” Sobolak adds. 

As Katrina Bartow Jacobs explains, structured literacy is a philosophical approach to literacy education that consists of two main pillars. The first is an emphasis on direct instruction of phonics and how the English language works. This explicit instructional piece includes systemic and routine skills work of “really basic concepts of phonics, and phonological awareness—how words work, how syllables work. All those pieces.” 

The second pillar, which is equally important in a comprehensive structured literacy curriculum, includes “authentic and meaningful opportunities for students to read texts that may be beyond their decoding skills, as well as write, draw pictures, and express themselves in whatever way is developmentally appropriate,” Bartow Jacobs says. 

This intentional pairing of explicit instruction with authentic language experiences forms the foundation of structured literacy, with each element acting as a strand in what is sometimes called the “literacy braid.” 

How does structured literacy fit at Falk?

Bartow Jacobs says Fundations, the curriculum used by Falk teachers, was chosen in part because it provides ample room for the authentic language experiences that were already so deeply engrained in Falk’s culture. These experiences include writing workshops, reading novels, and other creative projects that allow students the space and opportunity to engage meaningfully with language. 

That space and flexibility are critical at a place like Falk, where the individual teachers’ freedom is at the heart of the unique learning experiences provided by the school. As a school rooted in progressive educational values, it’s important to foster students’ curiosity and intrinsic motivation through collaborative and project-based work. 

Thus, Fundations was chosen because it doesn’t determine everything a teacher does in the classroom but instead preserves space for the individual artistry and mastery that Falk families value in their children’s educators. 

“What we see at Falk is a balance between that explicit instruction and the ways that teachers draw on incredible authentic curriculum, language, books, things that are their passions, things that follow the passions of the students in the classroom,” says Bartow Jacobs. 

“So we still see teachers making sure there’s room for writer’s workshop, making sure that all of our children feel confident and supported to tell the stories that matter to them,” she says. 

While the flexibility of a curriculum like Fundations, which leaves plenty of room for teacher innovation, was a key factor in Falk’s decision, another critical goal for administrators was for teachers to share a single curriculum—one that would link classrooms at the same grade level as well as provide continuity as children move from one grade level to the next. 

“It’s making sure that all kids have the tools they need to make sense of language,” says Bartow Jacobs. “It’s really an equity piece.” 

 “We never want our kids to feel like you can only have books that are at your level, or you can only access writing or reading once you’ve achieved a certain benchmark,” she adds.  

“It’s really about giving our students multiple chances—across the day, across the week, across the curriculum—to engage these ideas,” says Bartow Jacobs, “and I think that’s why we’ve made a deliberate decision as a school to use a curriculum that is very targeted and focused on one strand of that structured literacy braid while still honoring individual teachers’ expertise in the other pieces.” 

What about children who are already proficient readers? 

With its emphasis on phonics and decoding, structured literacy is sometimes perceived as having less value for students who are already proficient in reading. Parents may worry that structured literacy will slow down or even hold back their children’s reading education. 

“What the research tells us,” says Sobolak, “is that structured literacy doesn’t hold anybody back. There are benefits for all learners.” 

For example, a very proficient learner, Sobolak says, “is learning the patterns of our language. They’re learning the orthography or spelling structure of our language, and that’s going to help them build their vocabulary and increase their writing skills.” 

In the case of Fundations and structured literacy, Sobolak stresses that the interactive and tactile nature of the lessons benefits all students. 

“We know from the research that it is the support that many students need, and it helps accelerate students who already have reading basics down to achieve even more.” 

She echoes Bartow Jacobs’ description of literacy as an issue of equity, noting how literacy underpins student achievement in other areas of the curriculum such as social sciences, math, and science. 

“I think we’ve had a historical problem in our country of not meeting [student] needs [when] teaching them to read and teaching them to achieve the highest level of literacy that they can,” Sobolak says. “Recognizing that that impacts their growth not only in the language arts classroom but in math science social studies and out into their greater learning out in the world” is a vital step. 

Where does structured literacy fit among national literacy conversations?

Decline in literacy across Pennsylvania and the United States

Falk Laboratory School is not alone in implementing some form of structured literacy, says Michelle Sobolak. In the wake of recent headlines about the decline of reading proficiency nationwide, Pennsylvania is one of at least 30 states to pass a law requiring instruction based on the science of reading. 

A recent story by local National Public Radio station WESA reported that “just over 50% of all Pennsylvania third through fifth graders scored proficient or above on statewide exams during the 2021-2022 school year” and “only 41% of Pittsburgh Public Schools third through eighth graders performed proficiently on state reading tests for the 2022-2023 school year.” 

“This is a nationwide push and it certainly is a push in Pennsylvania, where our own Department of Education put out structured literacy competencies for schools to work through, and for teacher programs as well,” says Sobolak. 

Bartow Jacobs adds, “For us at Falk, the interesting challenge is what we can learn from the national context and discussion without adopting some of the things that we really don’t hold as values,” she says. “So for us, we don’t want to be focused just on whether the child is reading at grade level. We don’t want to be focused on this comparison of who is doing the best. We really want to be focused on giving children what they need to be successful communicators, readers, and writers in the world, and asking whether we’re helping them grow along their trajectory.” 

Structured literacy as a solution to the "reading wars"

Historically, literacy was taught to students in theoretical terms, using an exclusively phonics-based approach. During the 80s and 90s, a new approach, called the whole-language method, grew in popularity. Recognizing the need for immersive reading experiences, the whole-language approach encourages students to dive into reading without explicit, proactive literacy instruction. 

While the traditional method was missing a key element—the authentic language experiences so central to Falk’s mission—critics have argued that the whole-language approach is equally inadequate for not spending enough time on instructional elements like phonics and decoding.  

Referring to this back-and-forth, Sobolak says, “We’ve had a lot of missteps in teaching kids to read. We have a pendulum that swings far in one direction and then we realize that doesn’t work and it swings back in another direction.” 

Bartow Jacobs adds that these “reading wars” have had a ripple effect on teacher training. “When the pendulum swings from one approach to the other, you end up with teachers who’ve never been given the support they need to teach these explicit foundational literacy programs,” she says. “If they don’t know it themselves, how are they going to teach it to kids?” 

“The turn toward structured literacy is meant to escape this back-and-forth,” Sobolak says. 

“We’re asking, ‘What has time and time again been proven to work with kids?’” The answer: “It is this explicit and systematic way of teaching students to read. Teaching them about the sound structure of our language, teaching them to decode and practice that, teaching them to build fluency in prosody, teaching them and helping them build really robust vocabularies as well as helping them be deep comprehenders of different types of texts. And structured literacy really taps into all of that.” 

For Bartow Jacobs, structured literacy offers a solution to the back-and-forth by getting away from a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy. “The states that are seeing the most success are states that are really combining direct instruction of language with really strong teacher support and teacher training and with room for teachers to feel confident in modifying or utilizing the curriculum in multiple ways,” she says. 

How has structured literacy impacted the Falk community? 

Teacher perspectives

By the start of the 2024 school year, one year after the initial implementation of Fundations at Falk, teacher support for structured literacy was overwhelmingly positive. 

In a survey sent to faculty by Bartow Jacobs and Sobolak, 84% of all respondents viewed the importance of routine structured literacy instruction as an 8 or higher on a scale from 1 to 10. Another question, “how well does Fundations match your goals for structured literacy in the class,” yielded similar results, with 79% of teachers answering 7 or higher. 

Many teachers noted that while following the Fundations curriculum can occasionally feel tedious or restrictive, the payoffs they see in the classroom far outweigh the downsides.  

“The fact that for the first time in 3 years I'm seeing kids really know their letters and sounds and reading and writing makes this process all worth it!!,” one faculty member wrote. 

“I love having something in place rather than trying to piece it all together,” another adds. “I do wish I had more time for reading groups, but I am making it work as I am seeing the benefits of this structure." 

Third-grade teacher Lindsay O’Sullivan, who has been at Falk Laboratory School for more than 20 years, had reservations about the structured literacy approach heading into the 2023–24 school year. But by the second half of the year, she says, she was a big fan, in large part because of the structure Fundations offers teachers, both from year to year and within an individual classroom. 

Practicing rules of phonetics and spelling “just starts to become automatic [for the students],” she says, “and when you introduce a new rule, they’ve done the previous rule five times. By the beginning of third grade, they are sometimes reminding me of things.” 

She adds that the repetitive aspects of Fundations are manageable, occurring “in these little snippets of time, so you’re reviewing at the beginning of each lesson for maybe three minutes. The repetitive nature helps it to feel less overwhelming.” 

O’Sullivan also says Fundations sets an expectation for her students while leaving room for mistakes and growth. "I try to set up an environment where we know we’re going to make mistakes. Fall back on your rules, and if you make a mistake, so what?” 

Emerging trends

In addition to providing structure for Falk students and teachers, Fundations has also sparked academic improvement across classrooms. 

Researchers Bartow Jacobs and Sobolak used Acadience (a screener based on DIBELS, or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), to measure students’ acquisition of literacy skills at the beginning of the 2023–24 school year and again at the beginning of the 2024–25 school year. 

In all three grade levels assessed, student literacy skills improved. One grade, for instance, saw a 20% increase in students performing at or above grade level and a 20% decrease in those performing below or well below grade level. Other data sources, like Fundations unit checks and teacher observations, reflected these trends. 

Another benefit of the new curriculum, Bartow Jacobs says, is the fact that structured literacy instruction can identify students who need extra help with reading and writing before they start to fall behind their peers. 

“We’re off to a really good start with this, and it’s feeling like the right program for our community,” she says. 

Bartow Jacobs also believes the new curriculum succeeds in helping students achieve their full potential rather than progressing through grade levels without reaching their individual learning capacity. 

Collaboration and creativity within the curriculum

Falk teachers are also finding ways to incorporate the school’s values of innovation and collaboration into the curriculum, just as Falk administration hoped they would when selecting Fundations. 

Just last month, third-grade students in Jenny Brent’s class made “decodable texts” for their kindergarten reading buddies. These short, illustrated stories focused on rules that kindergarteners were learning at the time—common sight words and basic consonant-vowel-consonant constructions. 

Bartow Jacobs says storytelling projects like these are just one of several ways students are putting their newly improved literacy skills to creative use at Falk.