Spencer Russell on What We Get Wrong About Reading Instruction

Spencer Russell’s first-grade teacher never made him feel bad, but as a struggling reader, he reached the conclusion that he was “one of the dumb kids.” What’s worse, he had evidence. 

He was one of the weakest readers in his class, which led to challenges with writing and spelling and confirmed his assessment of how he measured up against his classmates. “I eventually caught up (many kids don’t),” he writes today. “But I still remember exactly what it's like to be behind… and I can't stand the thought of any child feeling that way.”

Once Russell became a father, he didn’t want his son struggling to keep pace in school. So the former Teach for America kindergarten and first-grade teacher started teaching his 18-months-old to read. By two years old, his son was reading.

Russell, a social media influencer with five million followers across his TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram accounts, insists his child isn’t gifted. “I just knew how to teach reading and how to make it simple,” and that realization inspired him to create Toddlers Can Read in 2021, a company that offers resources to help parents build “strong, independent readers in as little as five minutes a day.” Russell also leads literacy strategy at Lovevery—a business that creates toys to support child development. 

I recently spoke to Russell, who was the standing-room-only keynote speaker at the 2024 South by Southwest EDU conference, about reframing how to motivate young students, why he thinks 18-month-olds are old enough to learn to read, and how parents are one of the greatest untapped resources outside the classroom. 

PAIGE TUTT: Educators often emphasize meeting kids where they are, and not rushing them into academics too soon. How does this square with your philosophy that kids as young as 18 months can begin learning to read? 

SPENCER RUSSELL: I think many folks believe in a false dichotomy between learning and play. I try to pair learning with play. When I started developing resources and building a following online, I was showing parents what to teach and how to do it—you teach three sounds at a time, you review them until the kids master them, then teach three more. 

Parents shared videos of them doing this work at home with their kid jumping off the couch onto the flash card with the corresponding sound; parents were hiding flash cards around the room and kids were finding them with a flashlight; they were burying flash cards and having their kid dig for treasure. I knew this was fun—but they were making it even more fun. 

I started sharing those ideas, then people shared more. We've evolved together to create an approach that says if you start with the premise that learning can be fun—and that's a big premise, not everybody believes it—and you think it's worth getting started now, there are a million ways to make learning to read fun for your kid. 

TUTT: You’ve referred to parents as one of the “greatest untapped resources” for teaching children to read. What does involving families look like?

RUSSELL: For teachers, this can be as hands-on and involved as home visits, hosting parent workshops at school, or having a weekly or monthly newsletter. It can be as simple as sending some resources to the parents for support, or coming prepared to parent-teacher conferences with an update on their kids' progress in phonics and blending plus a couple strategies the parent can use to support them at home. 

We’ll never get to the action if we don't change the fundamental beliefs that we have. Parents are much more capable than most teachers believe. We say “the parent can't do this” or “I sent home this assignment and they didn't do it accurately.” No, we've got to apply the same grace that we had when we learned how to teach. Someone taught and coached us; we can teach and support parents. 

We often assume that we as teachers are the only ones who can do these things. But I spent time outside of school showing parents exactly what to do to assess kids each week, and they were able to take it from there. Involve parents in the process. Send something home that says: here's where your kid is at and here's a skill that you can practice. That makes a really big difference.

TUTT: While we’re talking about changing beliefs, you say we’re still getting some things wrong about how we teach kids to read in classrooms. Can you elaborate?

RUSSELL: First, there’s how we teach reading itself. There are still many strategies we're using that are not as effective as they could be, like the three-cueing system. 

Instead, students could be learning a pattern—every time I see -IGH together, it makes this sound. I don't have to look and see the word knight or light, I can blend those three sounds together, understand what it says, and then I can read all these other words too. When you teach a kid to memorize sight words, they may learn that one word, but they’re not learning a skill or pattern that is transferable to any of the many, many other related words they will need to be able to read in their lifetime.

Also, we don't always pair the science of reading with learning science. The science of reading is going to give you a lot of what: Here's an amazing scope and sequence for phonics sounds, here's a progression of phonological awareness skills. Learning science is the how. So you can have the perfect unit that says we're going to teach these three skills in this order. But the teacher needs to know: What do I do first? Is this whole group, small group, or one-on-one? How quickly do I move? How do I assess progress? When do I move on? 

TUTT: How did you approach answering these types of questions when you were in the classroom?

RUSSELL: As teachers, we have things that we know work best. It seems like an obvious statement but, for example: small group beats whole group, and one-on-one beats small group. We need to teach kids a couple skills at their level. Small statements, huge impact. When I was in the classroom, my job was to take all of this information about the science of reading and figure out the fastest way to help kids learn.

To me the fastest way was to track their data on a couple of these skills—especially phonics and blending. I’d group them based on what the next three sounds they need to learn are: based on who's a three-sound blender, a four-sound blender, a five-sound blender. Then I’d give each group two to three minutes of high touchpoint, super-targeted sessions at my desk as many times as possible until every child has learned the skill, then switch the group up.

That stuff was a big part of why my kids moved forward. It wasn't just the fact that it was good reading instruction, it's the fact that I paired it with all these other things we know about how kids learn best. 

TUTT: But it’s not just applying the science of reading, you’ve also got the practical needs of a large classroom full of different skill levels?

RUSSELL: It can be challenging, for sure. There are a couple practical things educators can do. 

Classroom management skills are very important. The ability to have kids working independently on tasks so you can pull kids over for a small group is critical. It is possible to do this whole group, but it’s better if you’re able to get kids working productively while you’re with a small group.

Next, create a system for quick, accurate summative assessments where you’re getting data on a daily or weekly basis. I had one sheet that I gave first graders every Friday. It took maybe 10 minutes for the kids to do on their own: math on one side, reading on the other. Then I would call them to my desk, one by one, and assess things like ‘Can they count to 100? by 10s, 5s, 2s, and 1s.’ I'd show them the phonics sounds in a random order, and track what they knew. 

Later, I’d enter the data into my computer, and shuffle my groups. I’d come in the next week with new groups based on what they learned in the prior week. Clear data—not on every skill, but the most essential skills you're trying to teach in reading—can really push results forward. 

TUTT: I can imagine this might sound, to a teacher, like a lot to add to their workload?

RUSSELL: I totally get it. We ask a lot from teachers. At the same time, there is a return and it’s not just for our kids—that's an incredible return, but the return is also for ourselves and our feeling of making a difference. When you're not doing this on your own, when your kids are making progress, there's a different feeling and energy in the classroom. 

So whether you’re spending 30 minutes prepping a resource to send home to parents every week to help with their kids’ reading, or giving a 15-minute assessment then spending 15 minutes just entering the data and moving them into groups, that stuff pays off. All the time you spend at school begins to feel a little better when you see that your kids are now learning how to read quickly and feel excited about learning. When parents are involved and helping, I really believe we get that time and energy back in multiples.

TUTT: You’ve said that just because we know the science of reading is important doesn't mean we have to give everything equal weight. How can teachers determine what's most important to focus on?

RUSSELL: Teachers have a lot of competing priorities that are going to impact their ability to focus on what's important. 

When I coached teachers and worked in professional development, one of the most important things we did was help teachers understand the rationale behind the curriculum: why the curriculum was written how it was written, why lessons were structured a certain way, and what the big shifts were in the Common Core standards. That helped them not just to read the script but make changes in the moment.

They didn’t just know the objective of the lesson, they understood the bigger objective behind that curriculum in order to kind of flex in the moment. I'd say that's probably the most important thing: building our knowledge and understanding so we can adapt, change, and flex that curriculum. Practically, this means having meetings with other teachers in the grade level to discuss expectations, to share what's going on in our classrooms—what's working and what's not—and to see what's ultimately driving the most recent success. 

TUTT: Motivation plays a significant role in your approach to teaching reading. How can educators foster real motivation in kids learning to read?

RUSSELL: People get motivation wrong, they think if it's fun, a kid's going to be motivated. Let's get kids into this really fun book series or let's pick a book on this topic. If the kid can't read it, they're not motivated. 

Motivation comes largely from feeling successful and I think if we flip the question, we’d say, how can we help more kids feel successful in their reading? Then we have a really good starting point because our actions now are aligned to how to track, measure, and show success.

One way that I would do this as a classroom teacher is I would assess frequently—not big assessments, but I'm assessing the kid to see how many phonics sounds we know this week. I'm telling the kid, “Here's where we are, here's our goal for next week.” We might set a goal  together. Then, we're learning, tracking, talking, assessing, and looking back. “You learned two more this week.” Super tangible. 

Maybe we still can't read that book that we want to, but we're building a growth mindset. We’re communicating that because of this behavior or because you focused in this way, you were able to learn this. We're building those wins over time. If we can help every kid understand where they are now, and how much progress they've made, they feel encouraged to keep building that progress. 

This interview has been edited for brevity, clarity, and flow.