What Structured Literacy Means
Structured literacy is the approach research supports for kids with dyslexia, and it comes down to five habits. Instruction is explicit, so nothing is left for the child to infer. It is systematic and cumulative, moving in a planned order where each skill builds on the last. It is multisensory, pairing what a child sees with what they hear, say, and write. It is diagnostic, meaning you check mastery and reteach rather than marching ahead on a schedule. And it goes deep on the code: sounds, syllables, spelling patterns, and word structure.
Orton-Gillingham is the best known form of this, and most programs marketed for dyslexia describe themselves as OG based. The label is unregulated, so read for the five habits above rather than the badge. A program that hits them helps your child whether or not anyone has assessed them yet, which is why waiting for a diagnosis before starting costs more than it saves. Our guide to the signs of dyslexia covers the assessment side.
What to Look For in a Program
Scripted Lessons
You are teaching a specialist approach without specialist training, and scripting closes that gap. Open the manual, read what it says, teach the lesson. Programs that assume you will design your own sequence put the hardest part of the job on the parent.
Small Steps and Mastery Pacing
Your child moves on when they have it, not when the calendar says so. The best programs break skills into increments small enough that a struggling reader wins most days, and they build in review that keeps earlier material alive.
Reading and Spelling Together
Spelling exposes gaps that reading hides, because a child can guess their way past a word they cannot spell. Programs that teach both from the same sequence catch those gaps early.
Decodable Text
Your child should practise on books built from patterns they have been taught. Levelled readers full of untaught words push kids straight back into guessing, which is the habit you are trying to break.
Choosing the right curriculum gets easier when you know what to teach, what to skip, and where to start.
Get the GuideA simple step-by-step plan for getting started.
Programs That Work Well
All About Reading
Orton-Gillingham based, scripted, mastery paced, with letter tiles and decodable readers built in. It suits families who want structure without a clinical feel, and it is the program most homeschoolers with dyslexia start on. Materials run $159.95 per level plus about $44 in one-time extras that carry across all four levels. Spelling is sold separately as All About Spelling, so budget for two programs if you want both. Lessons run thirty to forty-five minutes, which is long for a young child, and you can split one lesson across two days.
PRIDE Reading Program
Built for kids who need smaller steps than All About Reading takes. Every lesson follows a strict multisensory sequence, see it, hear it, say it, write it, and the scripting assumes no teaching background at all. Levels run $95 to $160. The trade-off is pace: a child who does not need that much scaffolding will find it slow, so this is the pick when another OG program has already stalled.
Barton Reading & Spelling
The heavy-duty option, built as a tutoring system and used by many dyslexia tutors. Ten levels, each with tutor training video, full lesson plans, and colour-coded tiles, at $300 to $350 per level. Barton publishes a free student readiness screening and a tutor screening that checks whether you can hear individual phonemes yourself, and taking both before you buy anything is the sensible move. The cost is real, and for a child with significant difficulty it buys a level of scaffolding the cheaper programs do not attempt.
Logic of English Foundations
Teaches 74 phonograms and 31 spelling rules, with reading and spelling integrated from the start, which fits a child who wants to know why English behaves the way it does. Foundations A runs about $227 with core materials, then $82 to $115 per later level. It asks more of the parent and runs longer per session than the others here, so it suits families with time and appetite for depth. Our phonics curriculum comparison puts it side by side with the alternatives.
What Doesn't Work
Guessing Strategies
Three-cueing, balanced literacy, and any method that teaches a child to work out a word from the picture, the first letter, or the sense of the sentence. These build the exact habit that holds a dyslexic reader back, and a child taught this way often looks fluent on familiar books and collapses on new ones.
Sight-Word-First Programs
Memorizing words as shapes fails at scale, because English has too many words and your child's recall is the weak link. High-frequency words still get taught, but through their patterns and the parts that are irregular, not as pictures.
Light Phonics With No Review
Programs that touch each sound once and move on assume retention your child does not have yet. Without cumulative review, everything taught in September is gone by December, and the year feels like running in sand.
How Long It Takes
Slower than the box suggests. Many kids need several times the repetition a program schedules, and a level that claims a school year can take two. That is not a sign the program failed or that you taught it wrong, and switching programs every few months is the most common mistake parents make here. Give any program a solid run before you judge it, and change only when a child is stalled rather than merely slow.
Short and daily beats long and occasional. Twenty focused minutes five days a week does more than an hour twice a week, because the skill you are building depends on frequency. Keep the reading session separate from everything else, and end while your child still has something left.
Before you buy a level, find out where your child is reading right now.
Start the Free Reading AssessmentA levelling tool, not a dyslexia screener. Takes about 10 minutes.
A Note from Homeschool Teacher Guide: What This Really Means for You
We watch families spend a lot of money in this corner of homeschooling, often buying a second program before the first one had a fair run. If your child is moving, even slowly, the program is working. Slow is what progress looks like here, and the parents who get the best results are usually the ones who picked something reasonable and stayed with it for a year.
The other thing worth saying: no curriculum treats dyslexia, and none of these programs replaces an assessment or the support a specialist can give. What they do is teach reading in the way a child with dyslexia can learn it. Pair that with one-on-one time and unlimited pacing, which is what homeschooling gives you, and you are offering conditions most classrooms cannot. That is a good place to be teaching from.
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☕ Buy us a coffee ($5)Frequently Asked Questions
What Kind of Program Does My Child Need?
Structured literacy: explicit, systematic, cumulative, multisensory instruction in sounds and spelling patterns, with enough repetition to reach mastery. Orton-Gillingham based programs are the best known form of it. Read any program against those five habits rather than trusting the label on the box.
Do We Have to Wait for a Diagnosis to Start?
No, and waiting costs you months. Structured literacy helps kids who turn out not to have dyslexia too, so nothing is wasted by starting while you sit on a waitlist. Pursue the assessment at the same time, since a diagnosis changes what supports and accommodations you can ask for later.
Is All About Reading Enough?
For many kids, yes. It is Orton-Gillingham based, scripted, and mastery paced, and plenty of families never need anything heavier. Kids with more severe difficulty sometimes need smaller steps than it takes, and that is when PRIDE or Barton earns its price. Give it a real run before you decide.
What Should We Stop Using?
Anything that teaches guessing from pictures, context, or first letters, which includes three-cueing and most balanced literacy materials. Sight-word-first programs belong in the same pile. If a program's readers are full of words your child has not been taught, they are training the habit you want to break.
How Long Should Progress Take?
Longer than you expect, and slow is not failure. Many kids need several times the repetition a program schedules, so a level marketed as a school year can take two. Judge a program on whether your child is moving, not on whether they are keeping to its timeline.
Sources
This guide was written in August 2026. Prices were checked against publisher pricing and this site's phonics comparison in August 2026 and change often.