The SLP's Guide to Structured Literacy Lesson Planning

You know what a structured literacy lesson is supposed to include. You can name the components, you understand the research, and you believe in the work. The hard part is what happens when the timer starts. The session is short, the caseload is full, and somewhere between the warm up and the wrap up, half of what you planned gets squeezed out.

This course is built for the realities you actually work in, whether that is a therapy session or a structured literacy lesson: short blocks of time, mixed groups, and students who often bring a speech sound disorder and a reading difference to the same table. Instead of handing you a script, I will show you how to think like a planner, so you can build lessons that hold together no matter how little time you have.

We will take apart a complete structured literacy lesson, look at why each component earns its place, and then put it back together in a way that fits a real session or lesson schedule. You will leave with a planning framework you can reuse, a clearer sense of what to keep and what to cut when time runs short, and the confidence that comes from knowing your lessons are intentional rather than improvised.

I teach this from the intersection of speech and literacy, where I spend my days. SLPs and literacy specialists each bring something the other does not, and the planner who can hold both builds stronger lessons. This is the science of reading through the SLP lens: not a separate job bolted onto your work, but a way of planning that lets speech and literacy goals work together.