The Structured Literacy Playbook – Preplanned Lessons for Building Phonics and Fluency Skills

By M. Orkin, S. Gannon, and A. Osburn (2025)

A new approach to teaching decodable texts!

I recently read The Structured Literacy Playbook—Preplanned Lessons for Building Phonics and Fluency Skills, and it has positively transformed several of my teaching practices. After implementing some of the strategies from this book, I’ve already seen meaningful improvements in my phonics and fluency instruction.

While UFLI emphasizes foundational phonics skills, this book extends instruction by embedding rimes, RAN activities, vocabulary development, and comprehension within decodable lessons. The authors also teach a strategy called “backwards decoding” based on rimes. For example, “sublime.” The student reads: ime, lime, ublime, sublime.

I highly recommend reading the book in its entirety, but below I’ll share several key ideas you can incorporate into your decodable reading lessons right away.

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Table of Contents

• Basic Lesson Footprint Steps A-H
• Why Backward Decoding?
• Expanding Fluency with FCRR
• Teaching Morphology to Expand Vocabulary and Comprehension

Basic Lesson Footprint (Steps A-H)

Objective:

Students will read and blend words with targeted rime patterns, practice heart words, build phonemic awareness through blending activities, and demonstrate understanding through dictation and comprehension questions.

A. Select 3 Sentences

Select 3 sentences from the text to study closely. These sentences should include the phonics concept(s) you are teaching. Write them. (For example: Let’s play a game with a rake. Water is in a well.  The ball sank in mud.) 

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B. Rime Review

Pull the rime patterns from 4 decodable words found in your selected sentences.
(For example: ake, ame, ell, ank)

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C. Single Word Reading

Using the rimes listed above, choose 4 words from the 3 sentences for single-word reading practice.
(For example: rake, game, well, sank)

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Create RAN Charts

On an 8×11 sheet of paper, create two 4×4 grids.

• Randomly repeat the 4 selected single words in the boxes.

• Then, pull short phrases from the sentences that include those 4 words and randomly repeat the phrases in a second RAN chart.

• These should be read chorally, independently, and then in pairs (p. 173).

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D. Heart Words and Suffixes

Select up to 4 heart words to teach or review (they do not have to appear in the 3 selected sentences). Use orthographic mapping.

Teach/review any prefixes/suffixes addressed in the text.

E. Practice Reading the 3 Sentences

• Display sentences one at a time, having students attempt to read silently first. The students should have a copy of the sentences.
• Next, scoop the sentence into phrases. Have students do the same. Scoop by subject, predicate, prepositions, and conjunctions.
• Chorally read the sentence aloud.
• Ask students who the sentence is about (subject phrase), what happened (predicate phrase), where, when, or how (predicate phrase). Did anything else happen? (compound sentences) What are you picturing? (visualization)
• Repeat with the remaining two sentences.

This is teaching syntactic phrasing, which involves guiding students to recognize and group words into phrases based on syntax, rather than reading word by word.

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F. New Vocabulary or Multiple-Meaning Words

Choose 1–2 words from your sentences (or in the text) that may be new or have more than one meaning.
(For example: well)

Define each meaning and use each meaning in a sentence.

Example:

well (noun) – A deep hole in the ground where people get water.
Example: “The bucket went down into the well to get water.”

well (adjective) – Feeling healthy and not sick.
Example: “I stayed home yesterday, but today I am well.”

Ask questions related to the two meanings:

• How do you stay well?

• What is a well?

• Why did people use wells long ago?

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G. Comprehension

Prepare 3 comprehension questions for students to think about as they read. Aim for a fact question, an inferential question, and a vocabulary-in-context question.

Sophisticated sentences that contain multisyllabic words with and without suffixes require different skills for fluency and comprehension (p. 138).

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H. Dictation

Using the words and sentences selected above, plan a dictation activity that includes:

• 1 of the heart words

• 3 of the rimes

• 3 of the words

• 1 of the sentences

Why Backward Decoding?

We read words from left to right, but backward decoding serves several purposes (p. 165):

• Breaks up the word into larger chunks.
• Activates auditory memory for similar words.
• Supports the accurate pronunciation of the vowel sound.

This supports orthographic mapping of the word so it becomes a sight word.

For decoding a multisyllabic word, students can divide words by rime pattern using backward decoding. After explicitly teaching rime patterns, have students identify the rimes in a word by working backward.

For example, with the word reptile, begin by placing dots under the vowels e and i (but not the final silent e). Two vowels signal two syllables. The dots help indicate where each rime pattern begins.

Next, underline the rime patterns: ep and ile. Starting with the last syllable, add the onset to the rime: tile. Then move to the first syllable and add its onset to the rime: rep.

Put it all together: reptile.

Expanding Fluency with FCRR

The Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) provides evidence-based fluency activities for each grade level. These ready-to-use materials are designed to support automaticity, accuracy, and expression through structured practice. Activities align with research on effective reading instruction and are organized by grade to make lesson planning simple and efficient. Teachers can print and implement these fluency activities immediately to strengthen students’ reading development.

I recently printed these out and laminated student sheets for repeated use. These activities are motivational, engaging, and educational, helping students learn new words in a fun and meaningful way.

K and Grade 1 FCRR

Grades 2 and 3

Grades 4 and 5

Teaching Morphology to Expand Vocabulary and Comprehension

Why teach morphology?

• Strengthens spelling skills by teaching rules for adding suffixes (e.g., doubling consonants, dropping silent e, changing y to i).

• Builds vocabulary by showing how prefixes and suffixes change the meaning and function of base words.

• Improves decoding of longer words by helping students break words into meaningful parts (base + affixes).

• Enhances fluency and comprehension by supporting phrasing, expression, and understanding of complex sentences.

I purchased these fabulous illustrated cards on Amazon, and they have been invaluable for teaching morphology. They cost $65, but they are well worth the time and effort it would take to find and print my own illustrations. When a new word part is introduced, pulling out the illustrated card immediately supports instruction and keeps lessons moving smoothly.

I am not affiliated with the following link, but I highly recommend these Teachers Pay Teachers morphology passages. They effectively reinforce the meanings of prefixes, bases, and suffixes through meaningful practice. These resources are appropriate for students in grades 3–5 and provide excellent opportunities for application and review.

Word Connections is a free 40-lesson resource by Jessica R. Toste, PhD. She says, “Word Connections was developed for students in third grade and above who continue to experience challenges with word reading even though they have developed foundational decoding skills. The lessons focus on promoting automaticity with reading ‘big words.'” The program includes reading passages. (When you click the link, scroll to the bottom of the page.)