Phonics Instruction That Can Help ALL Students With Savannah Campbell

Sara
Hey there, happy Monday. I am so glad that you are tuning in to this week’s episode, because we are continuing our podcast series where we are breaking down the five pillars of effective reading instruction.

Sara
Now, if you joined us last week, then you got to hear from my dear friend Christina Winter, and she talked all about phonemic awareness, which means that this week, we are going to dig into the wonderful world of phonics.

Sara
Now, if you are a third through fifth grade teacher, I bet that it is pretty safe to assume that you have or have had in the past students who still struggle to decode the texts that they are reading. So even though you know you’re in third through fifth grade, you still have students that physically cannot read the text, which is probably holding them back as readers.

Sara
And you know that this is problematic because if a student can’t decode the text, if they can’t physically read it, then they are going to struggle to comprehend it. And I think this reality just reminds us why we really need to prioritize helping students build a strong phonics foundation, if they are struggling with word recognition, because that is necessary if we want them to get to the end goal of comprehension.

Sara
Now, you’re probably wondering, what does that actually look like in upper elementary? I know it’s important, but what can I do to help my students? Well, keep listening because that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today.

Sara
Today I am joined by Savannah Campbell, and we are going to talk all about phonics instruction that can help all students. Now Savannah is a K-5 reading specialist. She is currently still working in a school. And the cool thing is is she actually has taught her entire 13 year career at the school she went to as a child, which I just think is so fun.

Sara
She holds two master’s degree in education. She is both Orton Gillingham and Letters trained. And over the past couple of years, she has really worked through transitioning from a balanced literacy mindset to structured literacy. And she just has a ton of knowledge and is such a good source for teachers who are on that same journey. She is so much fun to listen to. I know you guys are gonna get a lot out of this episode. So let’s jump right in.

Sara
Hi, Savannah, welcome to the show. I am so happy to have you as a guest today.

Savannah
Thank you, Sara. I’m really excited to be here. Ever since I connected with you at Unlocking Soar I’ve just been a big fan of yours. So I’m excited.

Sara
You’re too kind. Well, I have always been a big fan of yours. And I have I feel like I’ve learned so much from following you on Instagram. And I’m super excited to have you on today because you know a lot about a topic that my audience always asks questions about. And I feel like it’s something that I don’t have as much knowledge on.

Sara
So today we’re going to talk all about phonics. And I know that you have a lot of information and knowledge and strategies to share with the audience here. So let’s go ahead and start with just a general definition of what is phonics and really why is it important when we’re thinking about helping our students in terms of literacy growth?

Savannah
Yeah, so I guess I would classify phonics as helping children to immediately and effortly recognize the sound symbol correspondences, right, like so can you take the sounds in a word? And can you match them then to the symbols, the letters? Or conversely, if you’re reading, can you look at the squiggles on a paper? And then can you convert that back in your brain to the sounds that represent those squiggles?

Savannah
So it’s really important because our brains are actually not hardwired to learn to read. So our brains are hardwired to speak. So really, we don’t have to do anything special. We’re going to learn how to speak on our own. But our brains just aren’t we actually have to create these like new neural networks in order for our brains to make sense of it because reading is a human invention.

Savannah
And so phonics is really important too, because some kids do not automatically get it. And I think for a very long time as teachers we were led down a different path that wasn’t right, because some of our children will learn to read seemingly without much effort at all right like, and I know that a lot of us as teachers, learning to read was really easy for us was learning to read easy for you?

Sara
Yeah, I don’t remember learning to read like it’s one of those things where I just I I knew how to read you know, it’s just like I don’t I don’t remember I was homeschooled. So it’s like, I don’t remember my mom teaching me how to read. I don’t remember like having to do like phonics lessons or anything to like, figure out the words, I just, it’s like I figured it out when I was like five.

Savannah
And I think the statistic is something like 40% of our kids will learn to read no matter what we do. So 40% of our kids are going to be just fine. And so for a long time, we did more of this like whole language approach, where we tried to just immerse children into text and into language. And we thought, if we just exposed them enough, then they would learn how to read.

Savannah
And we know that that’s just not true. And it’s really been a very long journey for me of unlearning the things that I have learned in college and relearning. And I honestly think that my husband has been very helpful in that because my husband is the other kid. My husband is the kid that didn’t have the explicit instruction.

Savannah
And I remember him telling me one time, like, Why do you love to read so much? Like I spend all my time trying to figure out what the words say, I have nothing left to figure out what they mean. And it was like you’re trying to fight for right now. But yeah, so in a nutshell, that’s why it’s important because it’s not natural.

Sara
Absolutely. And I think like you bring up such a good point where it’s like, you know, 40% of our students are going to figure it out. But it’s like 60% is a huge, a huge number. And it’s like, we need to make sure that we’re doing the right things and you know, teaching in the right way to help those 60%. So we all students have that ability to do it.

Sara
So one of the things that I you know, most of the teachers in my audience are third through fifth grade teachers. And I think one of the sort of misconceptions out there is that phonics is only for lower elementary like K-2 so do upper elementary teachers need to know about phonics, do they need to care about phonics? I mean, even if all of their students are on grade level is phonics, still something that needs to be a priority and an upper elementary classroom?

Savannah
So I think it depends on whether or not it needs to be a priority. You would hope by the time they get to in third grade, that they can really read most single syllable words. But the thing is, we can’t live off hopes and dreams. And if your kids don’t have it, we have to have the tools in our toolbox to give them what they need.

Savannah
So I will be honest with you that the effect size for phonics instruction that not for grades is much lower than it is through K through two. But that being said, it’s because we know that the older children get the harder it is to remediate. So it’s gonna take longer, it’s going to take more effort and more time. But if children have not received the appropriate phonics instruction, before they have gotten to you, then absolutely we have an obligation to teach our kids those skills that they’re missing.

Savannah
Now, if you have a class of kids who are generally good at reading single syllable words, we can’t just stop there, right? Like, I was just talking about this last week about how it’s like, we expect children to go from these decodable to just reading texts, and there’s no like bridge from the single syllable to Okay, now you can just read whatever.

Savannah
And so I think we need to be really explicit in helping children to decode multisyllabic words once they have those single syllable words. So especially making sure that they know the syllable types is really important.

Savannah
So there are six syllable types. And it’s funny because when I was getting my second master’s, as a reading specialist, I was taught balanced literacy. And the one thing that stuck to me was the print of the teacher saying, Yeah, make sure they know the six syllable types, but then she never told us what they were. And so I had to like learn them on my own. So if you don’t know them, it’s okay. Nobody taught me either.

Savannah
Okay, so the two most basic are open and closed syllables, an open syllable ends in a single vowel. The vowel sound is long things like go and hi open. A closed syllable is one vowel followed by one or more consonants, the vowel sound is short, those are your CVC words cat hit.

Savannah
But here’s the thing is open and closed syllables make up most of our multisyllabic words too so you think of a word like fantastic. That’s just three closed syllables. So when I’m teaching open and closed, I teach them together. And when I’m teaching that in the upper grades, I’m only teaching it and multisyllabic words. If you have kiddos who are struggling to read in third, fourth, and fifth, it’s not because they can’t read hit or go, they don’t know what the vowel sounds are doing and multisyllabic words so you’re teaching them to be flexible with the vowel sounds.

Savannah
Then there’s magic E, which is vowel consonant, E, R controlled vowels like ar, er, IR, OR, then we have vowel teams and diphthongs. And then the last one is consonant LE. Consonant LE is the only syllable type that must be in a multisyllabic word. So like wiggle, that consonant LE stays together.

Savannah
I always like doing like a quick rundown unit on the six syllable types for my older kids once they come in, because I tell them like if you can just find these six things, you can read anything. So giving them lots of opportunity, I think the one of the pitfalls I had seen and one of the pitfalls that I had done was teaching the six syllable types in single syllable words, when that’s really not what they need.

Sara
Yeah, we talked about that a lot with the teachers in my membership, how it’s like, you’re gonna have a student that kindergarten, first grade and second grade seem to do fine. Because most of what they were reading was the single syllable words, but then all of a sudden, when you put these multisyllabic words in front of them, they’re like, I don’t know what to do.

Sara
But I mean, you’re absolutely right. It’s like if students know the six syllable types, then they really can unlock and figure out how to read anything. But that definitely requires support for them to figure that out.

Savannah
Well, and what you said, really rings true, too, because a lot of people say, Well, these kids are reading just fine. Do they really need phonics instruction? And then when they get to third, fourth, and fifth, because they were never explicitly taught, it kind of falls apart because they were getting along just fine. But now, they need to rely on things that they were never taught.

Sara
Yeah, I love that. So obviously, we want to make sure that what we’re doing is really rooted in research. So can you tell us a little bit about what does the research tell us about phonics instruction?

Savannah
Absolutely. So we have a lot of information about phonics. And I think the biggest thing that we have is the National Reading Panel. So the National Reading Panel was convened in 2000. And why it’s so important is because nothing since then has really been such a large scale government funded, look at all the available research.

Savannah
So the National Reading Panel, literally, it was the first time we had seen something this big of what does the research say? And can we make some determinations from the research about what we know about how kids learn to read?And there is a sub panel of people talking about phonics, I’m going to actually pull up the actual numbers, because I think it’s very important.

Savannah
So if you know much about effect sizes, point two is considered a small effect size, point four is considered a moderate effect size, and point seven or eight, I can’t remember or is considered large. So phonics overall has a point four one effect size. Now that is pretty significant. If you can come together and find anything that has that large effect size, like that’s really good.

Savannah
But what’s interesting is the largest effect size for phonics is actually first grade. In first grade, the effect size is point seven, four. So that is really the sweet spot for getting it done. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t get it done if they didn’t get there. But overall, we know that explicit systematic phonics instruction can help our children learn how to read.

Sara
I love that and can you just to make sure I got it. There’s kind of like the whole syllable types. I remember hearing people when they’re like, explicit and systematic, I’m like, what does that mean? But can you just make sure that we are teachers know when we talk about explicit and systematic instruction, what exactly does that look like in terms of phonics?

Savannah
Yes, so if any of you were raised in a balanced literacy world, like I was.

Sara
Many of the teachers in my audience were, yes.

Savannah
So it’s kind of the antithesis of that. In balanced literacy, it was really, you are not the sage on the stage, you were the guide on the side, right, like you just expose them to text you give them these tiny short mini lessons, and then you just let them go do the work of reading and writing.

Savannah
But we know that it’s explicit instruction, that is going to give us the biggest bang for our buck. So explicit instruction is instruction that doesn’t leave anything to guesswork right. It is this instruction we are directly telling children I will directly tell you, ai represents a in the middle of a syllable. A Y represents a at the end of a syllable. I think for a very long time, like actually standing in front of children and teaching them things got a really bad rap.

Savannah
And I think we have got to be okay with giving ourselves permission to actually teach our children. I seriously used to feel bad about it. Like, I can’t do that. I’m like taking away their agency as children. Like they don’t know we have to teach them with it. And systematic means that the skills build upon each other and this might be a good time to talk about why some programs actually aren’t that effective if that’s okay, let’s do it.

Savannah
Okay. So you will have any reading program you come across, they will say we are research base, we teach phonics, right, they say that, but here’s the difference. There’s two kinds of phonics instruction.

Savannah
One of them is this systematic phonics instruction, where the skills build upon each other and we give our children the opportunity to read and spell words based on the skills that we’ve given them. So there is no phonics sequence that is correct. They’re all acceptable as long as they’re getting the key skills. And so most of them, you know, we’ll start with CVC words, then we’ll go to digraphs and blends and magic E, but we’re building the skills upon each other. That is systematic phonics.

Savannah
On the flip side, embedded phonics is what you’ll see in a lot of programs. Embedded phonics is when we teach phonics, kind of like when it arises. So the texts lead the way with embedded phonics where say you’re reading a book and it happens to have a lot of magic e words. Okay, well, we’ll teach Magic e and the embedded phonics does not have the research to support it.

Savannah
So if they are saying that they are doing phonics, I would ask for their scope and sequence, what does that look like? I would ask to see the materials that are supporting that scope and sequence because if the only materials they have for phonics are the level texts themselves, that is not what we are talking about.

Sara
I think that’s super helpful for teachers to understand that it’s like, you know, especially I feel like as more and more teachers and schools and districts learn more about the science of reading and understanding and recognizing that like phonics is a huge part of it, and making sure that our students have access to that.

Sara
I know that a lot of you know, curriculum, companies are saying, we’re aligned to the science of reading, like we’ve got phonics, but just because they put a label on their resources doesn’t necessarily mean that they are 100% aligned or are what’s best for students. So I love that you really clarified the difference between embedded phonics and systematic phonics.

Sara
Now, I’m assuming that if you have a because again, I’m only thinking about the teachers here in my audience, if we’ve got a third, fourth or fifth grade student, and they are struggling with a lot of these phonics skills, even though they’re in fourth grade, we still want to walk them through that same scope and sequence that they would have gotten or should have gotten in first grade, correct?

Savannah
Yeah, I would say the pacing might be different. So you know, instead of just going through CVC A then CVC I like if you have a kiddo that’s coming to in fourth grade, unless they are English learners and have just gotten here, or if they unless they’ve come from a school that literally didn’t know, phonics, these kids have some basic understandings.

Savannah
So it’s really about giving them the number of repetitions that they need to be proficient. And it’s about making sure that we go through it fast enough that they can actually pick up on skills, because here’s what I’ve seen happen, like, kiddos are only given what’s on their level, right? And so like in K and one, they’ll have CVC words, but then if they haven’t mastered that, okay, well, then they only see CVC words in second grade, and third grade.

Savannah
And so by the time they get to those upper grades, they’ve never been exposed to anything else. So just making sure that we don’t spend forever on a specific skill, because we can always bring that cumulative review. And I think that’s kind of like the danger, like we have to make sure that these kids are, are approaching where they need to be, we can’t let them live forever with cvcs and digraphs. We just can’t.

Sara
I love that. And I think that’s such a good reminder that I feel like yes, we need to take them through the the systematic like the sequence, but at a pace that will get them hopefully to be, you know, closer to grade level and being able to access the, you know, the texts that they’re used to seeing.

Sara
Okay, so let’s talk about some practical really things that teachers can do. Do you have any, you know, routines or ideas for how teachers can bring phonics instruction into their classroom?

Savannah
Yeah, so I would say that if you are a third, fourth or fifth grade teacher, the bulk of your whole group instruction should really be morphology. And I know we’re going to talk about that on another day too.

Savannah
So if you have kiddos who are basically where they need to be your instruction should be explicit multisyllabic instruction. However, in your small groups, those kiddos who do not yet have it, they really need to have this explicit phonics instruction. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have access to the whole group. So and this is a really big debate. And there are some really knowledgeable people that disagree with me on this one.

Savannah
But I think that children need to be exposed to the whole group. And then we fix the holes in small groups. So let me give you an example. Like, kids can still be taught prefixes and suffixes, right. If I’m still learning my vowel teams, there’s no reason I can’t learn that un means not so exposing them in whole group and then remedying it in small group.

Savannah
So I think that the biggest thing I would encourage your audience to do is to start incorporating cumulative review that has been my big thing. So I’m gonna give you a link to two things that I have there, I have two different sound decks that your audience can have.

Savannah
So the first one is just basic phoneme, grapheme correspondences. So I start every single lesson with a sound deck. So a sound deck would be think of like an alphabet, like ABC, deck right? Like you would hold up the ABCs, they would tell you the sound. But it’s not just the ABCs. We also have digraphs. In there, we have the vowel teams in there, we have the R control valves, all of those things are included in the sound deck.

Savannah
So after you teach a skill, you just include it in your sound deck. And then at the beginning of the lesson, and my teachers do this whole group, I do it small groups. So the kids sometimes see it a couple of times a day, but you’re flashing through it, and you’re getting them to give you the sounds that it makes because remember, we want automaticity and sound symbol correspondences.

Savannah
But then once they get to the upper elementary grades, we can do the exact same thing with morphemes. So a morpheme is your smallest unit of meaning. So things like Jecht is a root ing is a suffix. So I have another sound deck that has all of the prefixes, suffixes roots and Greek combining forms. And anytime I teach them one of those that I display it and they have to read the morpheme and then they have to tell me the meaning.

Savannah
So I find this weird really useful because I feel like if we can become automatic with the tiny parts, it’s going to make the bigger parts easier. Another thing that I really encourage teachers to do is to review reading and review spelling every day.

Savannah
One of the things that I see a lot is like you’re teaching beautifully, you’ve got that explicit instruction down your teaching, just say the prefix miss this week. But then everything you do throughout the week shouldn’t be about the prefix miss because it’s not just can they read miss it’s, can they read this in context of everything else I’ve learned.

Savannah
So when you’re doing things like spelling routines, make them do words they’ve already done before, something so simple you can do is have them open up their notebooks, write one through five, or one through 10. The first couple of words can be the current skill, but then the remainder of it should be things that you have done before, kids will never master, what we’re expecting them to learn if we do it one week, and then they never see it again. So dictation is such an easy way to incorporate that cumulative review.

Savannah
Another thing you can do is just like make a PowerPoint of words from what you’ve already taught your kiddos and just flash it. So I have ones that I’ve made. And so like the word rejection will come up, and I’ll be like, Okay, what’s your root there? And they will say, Jeff, okay, what does that mean? It means to throw. So making sure that you’re doing a mixture of current and previous skills is huge. I spend between like a third and a half of my lesson on review, actually.

Sara
I think that is such a good reminder for teachers, because I think so often we feel this pressure to like, keep moving forward. And like we have to get through all of our standards and make sure our students know everything before the end of the year. But it’s like if we taught them something back in September, if we’re not continuing to, like bring that in front of them.

Sara
They’re gonna forget about it before, before the end of the semester, you know, so I love that your one I love that review is a huge part of your instruction. But I think also to the fact that you just said you said, What about 30% of your time with your students is review. I think that just hopefully that gives teachers in my audience permission to go back review the things that you taught, like, yes, we want to keep moving forward, but don’t be afraid to review the things that you’ve already taught.

Savannah
And to add to that, too. So orthographic mapping is, you know, that ability to effortlessly retrieve a word. So many of our kids will orthographically map with seeing a word between one and four exposures, right. But then there are some of our kids who take hundreds of exposures.

Savannah
And so when we do cumulative review, when we are mixing it up for them, we are giving them the exposures they need to be proficient with it. And I think that especially for our struggling learners like that is that’s how we catch them up. That’s how we catch them up in whole group, even if they are behind because we are continuously reviewing those skills that they might not have mastered yet.

Sara
I love that such a good reminder. This episode has been filled with so much knowledge, so many practical things for teachers, I just appreciate you coming on and sharing with the teacher.

Sara
So my audience, but to end this out, do you have any advice or encouragement to teachers who either maybe they don’t feel really confident or equipped, you know, phonics is something that is not in their normal wheelhouse, but they recognize that it’s an important part of their instruction? What encouragement would you give to those teachers who really want to be effective with their phonics instruction?

Savannah
Yeah, so I think that, you know, I was a fourth grade teacher, I don’t think I’ve mentioned what I do. I’m actually a reading specialist now. But I did teach fourth grade, and I taught first grade and I taught third grade.

Savannah
And I remember I had read the statistic wants that it was like, well, if kids aren’t reading on grade level by the end of third grades, they’re never going to, and I was like, Oh crap, when they come to me and fourth grade, what am I supposed to do? You know, but I think that number one, we have to remember that we as educators get the chance to change the statistics.

Savannah
The statistics are a result of what we do with our teaching. And the thing that I always like to remember, especially as an interventionist is that difficult does not mean impossible. Oh, I love that. Yes, it will be more difficult to remediate for those students, but it is not impossible.

Savannah
I have to say that I have some kiddos that I have been teaching since I was in balanced literacy. And you know, I had a kid last year, we take SOS, and I had a kiddo last year, he was in fifth grade, and he had never passed a single reading Sol. And then last year, he finally passed it. And I know that a standardized test is not everything. But it is a good feeling when you have a kid who has struggled for a really long time. So I just want you to keep in mind that it is harder, but it is not impossible.

Savannah
And I don’t want teachers to think that they have to overhaul everything they do overnight, you will burn out. I always tell people just take one thing, if the only thing you start doing after listening to this is maybe you start having kids do dictation of things you’ve done before, well then that is a win for me. So be kind to yourself. It is not our fault that we were not taught these things.

Savannah
And now if you are listening to this podcast, how amazing it is that you are listening to educational things in your free time like that is such a testament to the teachers that we have out there today. And I really do believe that we’re the generation that’s going to get it right for the sake of kids and everybody listening to this and both of us sitting on here get to have our hand in that.

Sara
I love that but seriously that it feels so encouraging to me. And I know that teachers in my audience are going to feel so encouraged by that difficult does not mean impossible.

Sara
Where can my audience connect with you if they want to continue learning from you following you? Where’s the best place for them to connect with you?

Savannah
Yeah, you can find me basically everywhere at @campbellcreatesreaders Campbell like the soup, and then creates readers. I’m really most active on Instagram. And then on my website, too, I love writing. And I love just, I have a lot of posts on my website about morphology and teaching phonics.

Savannah
And I always say that I try to be the person that I wish I had had in the start. There are some people that I feel like they make you feel like you don’t know anything. And I don’t want to be that person. Like, like, I knew nothing starting this. I’m very transparent about where I’ve been, and where I’m going and how I’m going to continue to learn. So yeah, Campbell crates readers find me you can email me [email protected] And I’d love to connect.

Sara
Wonderful. We will link to all of those in the show notes. And if you are not following Savannah on Instagram, be sure you go follow her after this episode. She puts out amazing content. She shares just really practical suggestions, lots of knowledge. She’s just one of my favorite literacy experts on Instagram.

Sara
So Savannah, thank you so much for joining me today. This was just a wonderful conversation. I know the teachers in my audience are going to benefit from it. I can’t wait to have you on again, because like you mentioned, we have some morphology information we want to share with my audience as well. So I’ll be excited to have that interview coming up here shortly.

Savannah
Thank you so much. It’s my honor.