How to Teach Morphology in Early Elementary Without Overwhelming Your Students with Sarah Paul

What if I told you that you don't need a $20,000 master's degree or two years of professional development to finally feel confident teaching reading? That is the power of the Reading Roadmap. We kick off October 19th, and in just four short weeks, you'll learn the must-know strategies and get every single tool you need to actually put them into action. We'll give you step-by-step lesson plans, quick and easy assessments, and print-and-go literacy centers that make implementation simple. Here's the thing. You can only open the doors twice a year, so if you've been waiting for the shortcut, the clear plan that saves you time, takes away any overwhelm, and helps you see growth fast, this is it. Head to PlayDotorPlato.com/JoinTheReadingRoadmap and grab your spot before the doors close. If you're on Instagram and you teach reading, chances are you already follow Sarah from Snippets by Sarah. And if you don't, you're about to fall in love with her wisdom and warmth. With over 136,000 followers, Sarah has built a global community of educators who are passionate about doing right by their students. In today's episode, we're sitting down with Sarah to talk about her journey from first-grade teacher to literacy interventionist, her deep dive into morphology, and the powerful ways we can help even our youngest readers understand how words work. Her passion is contagious, her strategies are practical, and this conversation is packed with plenty of aha moments you will not want to miss. Welcome to the Science of Reading Formula, where you'll learn simple, brain-friendly ways to make it faster, easier, and a lot more fun for kids to learn how to read. I'm Malia Hollowell, a National Board Certified Teacher and Author who spent the last 20 years geeking out on brain-friendly teaching. This is the spot where I share all of my best lessons learned with you. Sarah, I am so excited we finally get to chat. I know my team and I have been dreaming of this conversation for so long, so thank you for finding the time to make this work. I have a million questions I want to ask you, but for anybody who is new to your world, could you please take a moment and just tell us a little bit about your background and how you became an expert in literacy instruction? Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to talk about my favorite subject. So I've been in the reading world for a while now. I actually started as a reading pullout teacher my very first year of teaching, but had like no credentials to do that, so I moved to first grade, and that's actually where I learned the most about reading. So anyone who's been a first grade teacher knows, I mean, there's so much that happens in first grade with reading. And that's where I fell in love with teaching reading. And then I developed an interest about why it's so difficult for some kids to learn to read. That interest led me to learn more about dyslexia, and it was that that led me into what we now call the science of reading, because I was trying to learn more for my students who I believed had dyslexia. And just in that process, I learned about best practices for reading. And that was during the balance literacy era. So you know, there was this whole conflict of like, wait a minute, they're telling me to do it this way, but I feel like this other way makes more sense. So I became a reading interventionist in 2012, and I did that until about 2023. And now I just wear like a lot of hats like many of us do. So I work for my local school district, and we started a high impact tutoring program. So I support and supervise the tutors doing that. And what I love about that job is that I get to meet and work with students, like all over the city at all these different schools, so that's been really fun. Inside of my school role, I still tutor kids, and I pour a lot of time into creating resources for teachers. I've been doing that for over a decade, and I just really love it, and you're probably the same way, right? We have an enormous list of things we want to create, and it doesn't get old. Like it's just so fun making things and being inspired by our students. So if only there was more time of the day, right? I also have a blog and an Instagram page where I just share my ideas. And as much as there can be like a negative to social media, but I love about it and really appreciate about it, is that you get to connect with people, right? You and I would never have met. It's pretty incredible to get messages from teachers from across the country or even in a different country about their students and wanting to connect about how they can help their students and become an even better teacher. And I just really love that world. But the thing I'm most excited about, and this is connected to our topic, is Michelle Sullivan and I from the Colorful Classroom. We're making a morphology class together. So that has been like a big passion project that is finally almost ready. I love that you geek out on literacy instruction as much as I do. It's sometimes I think I am such, I'm a closet nerd because I'm so excited to talk about phonics and political awareness and phonemic awareness and just all the things. So I love that you are as excited about this new morphology class that you're seeing as I am about all of the courses I've created to. So true. And you didn't mention it in your intro. You're very humble, but could you talk just a moment about your community because you've really created this amazing community that goes beyond country boundaries. I mean, you really have a community around the world of teachers who are as invested in best practices as you are. It's so amazing. I, you know, it's amazing how it even happened. Like I was on Instagram for a while and it just sort of took off and it's just that shared mindset of everyone just wanting to do right by their students. And when you know better, you do better. And I just, I love, I'm so, so grateful for the community that I've built on Instagram and for the friends that I've made on Instagram. Like, you know, all of us, we do similar things and I just love that we've all come together and for that shared purpose. So it's really, it's really special. I have to say every time I log into Instagram, I see your face. That's the people that, that my algorithm knows that I love. So they have really pegged me as a snippets by Sarah's superfan. Oh my gosh. Thank you. That means the world to me. That's amazing. Instagram knows all the things. Well, I want to talk a little bit about your training because you've been trained in a lot of things. Oh, Orton Gillingham, letters, structured word inquiry, and I know we could, the list could go on and on. And I'm curious how that has informed the way that you teach and understand morphology specifically. What have you learned, what, how has that influenced the way that you teach it in this course that you are creating? Well, OG and letters were kind of like the first. It gave me that foundation, just an all things structured literacy. I recommend it to anybody who's wanting to start on their science of reading journey. But I also need to shout out PDX reading specialist, Barbara Steinberg, because early on she gave me most of, like, that's where I started. She had some courses. She had some like free things she did. And back then, you know, we're talking 2013, 14, 15, there wasn't much out there. And so Barbara was really at the forefront. So I learned a lot from her. I need to shout her out. And then in 2016, I took this structured word inquiry course through the Dyslexia Training Institute. And that's when my mind was blown because I feel like I understood all of, you know, the phonics. That was making sense to me and, you know, fluency, all those other parts. But the morphology, I did not have any background on. So what it did for me, though, is it taught me that it's not just about sound. It's about how words are built, even where they come from, and why they're spelled the way that they are. So structured word inquiry showed me that there's phonology, there's morphology, and then there's etymology, which is the history of a word. And they all work together. And that's how we explain why words are spelled the way that they are. So it also helped me realize that just if we just rely on phonology, which is like matching phonemes to graphemes, it is not as reliable when you get to bigger words, right? So it works early on and it's an essential first step. But once you get past that, we need more, we need that morphology. So admittedly, there was so much new information swirling around in my head. And at the time, balanced literacy was still the norm. So I was literally trying to balance all of it. And I knew I couldn't just sort of do it all at once. So I started small. Like I began pointing out suffixes in my intervention group, and I created lessons with suffixes and ed, and using the term base with my students all the time. And that was my first little shift, that when we decoder spell a word, let's focus on that base first and just understanding that it's a base and then there's a suffix tacked on. And then soon after, I found myself noticing morphemes everywhere. And this is where the magic happened. With my second graders, it kind of turned into this morpheme hunt where I was learning and they were learning and we'd spot like prefixes and suffixes and even familiar bases. And so it's that curiosity that we started and that kept growing and really structured wording create is rooted in that curiosity and how that leads to like investigating words. So to answer your question, the biggest shift is that I see words through multiple lenses now. So I start thinking about a words morphemes first. So how it's built with a base and if there's any additional prefixes and suffixes, then I move on to phonology and look at its sounds, its graphemes and even its syllable structure if it has, if it's a multi-syllabic words. So just understanding that all of it works together. And I want my students to know that too, that it's not just, and it doesn't just help like the spelling and decoding, it just helps you understand words in general more deeply. And just for anybody who's new to those terms, could you just give us a very quick cliffnotes version of what the difference between a base, a suffix and a prefix are, or any other definitions you think would be essential for this conversation? So the base is the main part of a word. And a base can be a free base, which is just a word like jump is a free base. But there can also be a bound base like J-E-C-T in the words inject and subject. That's a bound base. It's not a word on its own. It has to have other morphemes with it. And when I say morphemes, I mean the smallest unit of meaning. So a prefix, a suffix, and a base are all examples of morphemes. So we have our base, whether it be free or bound. And then prefixes are attached before a base and suffixes are attached after a base. And prefixes usually can change the meaning of a word. And the suffixes can also do that, but they also have a role, you know, like ED shows its past tense, for example. And some many suffixes can change the part of speech. So it can go from a noun to a verb or a verb to a noun. So those are the different morphemes. We talk about morphemes. And then a root, it's now's a good time to talk about that. In most phonics programs, and admittedly, I did this too, we refer to roots as what are actually bound bases. But I've learned that a root is actually the historical form of a word. So for example, when we talk about J-E-C-T, that bound base, it has a root, and the root is a Latin word. And I'm not going to try to butcher it and say it, because I will say it wrong. But that root is historical, and it has meaning. And that meaning can be found in words with that base. So that's when we talk about base and root. They're actually two different things. But in most like programs, we use the word root to describe bound bases, and admittedly, I did too, as early as just a few years ago. So when we think about early elementary teachers specifically, and you're talking about all of these different types of morphology and different units we can really dive into, what would you say is the thing that most early elementary teachers are missing out on, that learning opportunity that they just haven't quite leaned into yet? It's a great question. I think first off, we have to shift our mindset about how morphology fits in, and that it's not like an extra or something we wait to do. But it's just something that's really naturally woven in. So when we look at words to the lens of morphology, we're thinking about just how they're built and how each of those morphines carry meaning. And so for our youngest learners, what we want them to start seeing is we want them to see words as buildable, that a word is made up of these. You can take a base, and then you can build onto it. There's these meaningful parts that come together. So a kindergartner might just learn about suffix s. So what they're really learning there is that there's the base, a meaningful word, and it could be jump, it can be sit, they have a word, and you can add a suffix s. And in those cases, I use defer, but usually we talk about suffix s first to be plural. So you have cat, and then you add s, and now you have cats, you have more than one. So you're teaching them a lot more than just, you know, you're tacking the suffix s, and it has two sounds. It says, you're really teaching them almost like these puzzle pieces are coming together to form a new word. So one mistake I made early on was that I thought that I had to wait until students could read bigger words until I introduced different morphines. But actually, we can start to build that awareness early on, even just with oral language. So for example, take the word play, which is a word that kindergartners, first graders use all the time. They don't need to be able to read playing, replayed, player, playable in order to talk about that and to show how those buildable pieces work together to build different words and how they share a common base. So just getting that language out there is the first step, and it will really, really help students later on when they actually do have to read and spell some of those bigger words. I feel like you teed me up for this next question because I am so curious how morphology instruction can help prevent reading difficulties rather than remediate them later. What if you could learn everything you need to teach reading in just four short weeks? That is exactly what the Reading Roadmap gives you. We kick off October 19th, and you'll get the must-know strategies plus every single tool you need. Think step-by-step lesson plans, quick assessments, print and go literacy centers. No fluff, no overwhelm, just results. But doors only open twice a year, so head to flato2plato.com/jointhereadingroadmap and grab your spot now. I do think morphology is one of the most powerful tools. So when we teach students to recognize words as meaningful parts early on, when the words are simpler, when we're looking at like jumped in cats, we're training them to see patterns. And when they get to those bigger multi-syllabic words, this really, really comes in handy. So think about a word that has like 15 letters, right? That's a lot of graphemes to look for and to sound out, and then you have pronunciationships, you have the schwa, like it's a mess. But if there are some recognizable prefixes or suffixes or even a base, that is so much more manageable for them. They can just take that word and say, "Okay, I know this prefix, I know this suffix. What do I know? What parts can I already can help me to code this word?" And that's just a lot easier than taking a look at this long word and trying to memorize it. Because at the heart of dyslexia and struggling readers, you know, they have a hard time when they see those bigger words. They're not recognizing those patterns naturally always. They're just seeing a lot of letters. But if from early on, we kind of train them that, "Oh, there's these familiar morphines. The cognitive load is much, much, much lighter." They know where to start, right? They have some tools, they're like, "Okay, at the very least I can tackle it and make this word not quite so scary." And that actually really helps with spelling too. I learned a lot through my friend Tamara, and she runs a nonprofit called Shine Learning Services. And she taught me a lot about spelling and that a lot of the students that she works with, you know, they learn to read, and they got the reading down, but the spelling just stays the same. I mean, they just can't spell. It's so difficult. And I think that's really common. There are so many adults out there who still struggle with spelling, and I'm not a great speller either. But if we focus on just phonemagraphy mapping, like I talked about earlier, it just doesn't work. Now, it's essential early on. Like it's super, super essential early on for single syllable words and even some two syllable words. It's essential for learning to read, spell, and word recognition. But when we go beyond two syllables, that's when it stops working in morphology, just kind of gives students another layer to work with. So like I talked about earlier, we're going on a morpheme hunt. If you've been doing that since kindergarten, they develop a bank, right? They have this bank of morphemes that they've at least recognized. They don't have to know the meanings of all of them or have that memorized, but that's going to help them when they're reading and when they're spelling. And one other thing that can be helpful is just word relatives. If you explore a single base, it can lead to like 20, 30, 40 words with that same base. So they don't have to spell all of those words in isolation and, you know, have those Friday spelling tests where they're like, "Okay, I'm going to have to memorize this one word," and then these 15 separate words, but when they understand a base and then they see all these familiar prefixes and suffixes, especially if you use a word matrix, that's a lot easier. And it helps with vocabulary, too. As you're describing how all of these different pieces fit together, almost like puzzle pieces where you're adding on another layer and adding on another layer, I'm reminded of watching the national spelling bee, which admittedly we don't do every year, but, you know, one, every so often, we'll be flipping through the channels and it'll pop up on the screen. And I'm always amazed that these students are able to spell these very difficult words. And very often, one of the first questions that they ask is, "What is the origin of that word?" Because it then gives them clues about how to spell it. And so it seems like that's one example of so many we could come up with where this work is really essential to spelling and understanding words correctly. Definitely. Definitely. So let's get into the weeds because we always like to talk about what this looks like in action in an actual classroom. So what would this look like if we were working with a group of tier two or intervention students? So for me, it's a mix of explicit teaching, meaningful practice, and then intentional exploration. I say intentional because there's got to be going somewhere. So at times, I'll be more explicit with my teaching. And that's like, I may teach a suffix and talk about its job or a prefix and how its meaning affects the base. And then we'll give opportunities to decode and spell words with those morphemes. That's a really big part of it is just exposing them to that and that's a little more explicit. Sometimes I'll focus on a single base and we'll just explore its word relatives. And then sometimes it's just as simple as pulling out a word from a text you're reading. So this is great for those teachers who are like, "Okay, I don't know where to start." There's something called word sums and that's where you take a word and you look for its morphemes and it's almost like a math equation. So for example, reaction would be RE plus ACT plus ION. So what I did there was I took its three morphemes and then there's a plus sign between them. Just doing that, picking a few words from a text and being like, "Let's together write a word sum for these words," you're showing them the structure of the words. And it can lead to a lot of other learning and it's not always obvious. You might even as the teacher be like, "Wait, what is the base?" But it's kind of fun to explore that. Start with what you know. Like, "Okay, I recognize the suffix. I recognize this." And that's a really fun activity. So again, that small act of writing a word sum gives them a new lens. They start to look at words and they ask, "What parts do I recognize? What do they mean?" It shifts them from memorization to analysis. So I love that, just that analysis and not just trying to memorize. And I think it's because, I mean, this is not about me, but I was a struggling reader, struggling speller and memorizing is not easy for me. So anytime I can think about my students and how like, "Oh, I think memorization is difficult for a lot of our students and this is just a different approach," that's kind of what I love about that. And then last, you could also take that inquiry-based approach. So a good example of that, if your class is learning about elections, you might take that word election and explore it. So what's the base? You find that LACT is the base. Take a look at its Latin root and its meanings. You're really exploring there and then look for related words, selective, collection. And this is super fun because there's always surprises, right? Would you ever, like, I wouldn't guess that election and collection are related and meaning, but it all goes back to their root. And then the last thing is just making, like, connecting morphology to phonology. An example of that is, like, let's say you're reading a word with the suffix U-R-E. If it's added to a base with a T, it often says chur, right? It's a, that syllable T-U-R-E says chur. And just understanding that really the suffix is U-R-E and what's happening is when it's attached to the base that has a T, our pronunciation shifts. And this happens a lot at a much more basic level. It happens with ED. We see that in first grade when we add ED to certain words, there's three different pronunciations. So I just like to point those out as well when we're reading and just try to use morphology to help understand that. The name of this podcast is Science of Reading Formula, but we talk a lot about how teaching also has an art to it that we can't really, we can't describe in technical terms. And as I'm hearing you describe all of these different ways that we can teach morphology, I'm picking up on this high energy excitement that you're sharing with us. I mean, it's just, it's tangible, right? We can see or hear if you're listening to the, to the podcast episodes. You can hear the excitement and enthusiasm in your voice. I'm curious when you're thinking about teaching these skills, are you bringing that same energy and what impact have you seen it has on your students' excitement about learning these things as well? Oh, absolutely. And I think I can't help but get excited. And I think, I mean, it's kind of my personality to, to show how I'm feeling, good or bad. But I do think it can be contagious. Even if I get the eye roll of like, Oh, Mrs. Paul, you know, I do think if I'm showing my excitement, it's, it just, it has to be a little bit contagious, right? And even when my favorite is when students ask a question about a word and it leads to an investigation of some kind. I mean, the excitement that I feel, you know, I'm hoping it really translates to them and they can see that like, I'm an adult who didn't know the answer and I was really excited that I didn't know the answer. And I was really excited to learn more and then look what it did. It helped me to learn all these other words. I've used this example before, but a student in a book found species and special and this is a student I've been tutoring since kindergarten and he's now in fourth grade. No, since first grade and he's now in fourth grade. And he's like, huh, is that the same base? And I was like, I don't know. And you know, we looked into it and it was just so much fun. And I don't know if he'll admit it, but I'm pretty sure he had a lot of fun too. I'm sure he did. But I love, I love the freedom to not know all the answers to, I think as teachers, we often think that we have to know all the things and that's just impossible. And also this is a great chance to show our students that we aren't all knowing and all of us, it's a continual lifelong journey, right? Learning these new things and getting excited about leaning into what we don't know and not saying it as a failure, but really an opportunity. Yeah. I just, I love that reminder so much. Yeah. And so, go ahead. Yes. And our culture, I think there's just this like, when you don't know something, there's just like shame associated to it. And I just think like as teachers, we have such a powerful role and showing, no, it's actually like magic when you don't know something because you can find out, we have the tools at our disposal and then you learn something and that's like amazing. Absolutely. I could not agree more. So let's keep going down this path because I know a lot of our teachers are going to be hearing you break down all of these strategies and they're excited to try it in their classrooms and then they realize, holy smokes, my to-do list is so long. And I have a group of students who are really still struggling with the basics of phonics. So how can we fit morphology in when we're also trying to help students who are still working on those foundational skills? So I actually think they're ready to start like just because they use it in oral language. So they're ready to start super early. So I've always said, students have morphological knowledge. They just might not have an awareness of that knowledge. So think about kids in kindergarten. They're always saying, I'm the fastest. They somehow know that by adding EST, that suffix, it means the best. They might not know that EST is a suffix. They might not know how to spell it, but they know that just in that language, that's what they're saying. They also somehow know that if I say that I'm going to give you some cookies, I better not show up with one cookie because they know that I mean more than one. So that knowledge is there. It's our job to make them conscious of that. And in terms of weaving it into Fauna's instruction, I actually start as early as just with CVC words, with suffix s. So that's in kindergarten, you're teaching CVC words. It's like impossible to read a book without that suffix s. I say we just, it just weaves right in. So instead of looking at it as like this added thing, it's almost like you're just like giving them the tools to do what they need to do anyway. It like fits right in. Is there any worry of overwhelming students as we're sprinkling these into our lessons? You know, no, because I think, again, they see it, they hear it, and I think we're just explaining it. And something I do say a lot because, I mean, you're right in the sense of there are some concepts that are really tricky and they can get confused with the term base and all that. But it's just all about repetition. I think of myself as a learner. When I first hear something, it can be overwhelming, anything, right? I mean, the same when you're teaching phonics and you're introducing new val teams, it's like, oh, this is overwhelming. But if you keep saying it over and over and over and over again, it becomes less overwhelming. And it's almost like they're not, they don't even realize that they learn it. And that's what I think the benefit is. So instead of looking at it as like, oh, it's overwhelming to them, think of it as it's real overwhelming for that poor fourth grader who has never heard of it and they're behind. And now we're like, here, try this. And they're like, wait, what? Our theme is like, what are you, another thing? But if we start in kindergarten sprinkling, and I mean sprinkling, we're just like here and there, I think that it actually ends up helping our struggling readers way more. There's less overwhelm because there's not as much at stake. That makes total sense to me. It's introducing them not for mastery necessarily at the beginning, but just for exposure. Is that what you would say? Yep. Yep. Exactly. Well, you have been so generous. So our listeners are frantically taking notes, just to share so many strategies with us. Is there anything that you would recommend that teachers start with first? Just one next step that they can try in their classroom tomorrow? I think something easy to layer in is just like I talked about with the word sums. When you're reading a decodable text, looking for the different parts of that word and pointing them out, they might not know, but take a word, even if it's as simple as just a two morpheme word with a familiar suffix, and pointing out that there's two morphemes and that each of those have meaningful parts, and then writing a word sum for it to show that. Make it visible. Make those morphemes visible to them. I think that's a really easy thing to start doing. Also your language, start using the term base in suffixes and prefix and morpheme. Just start using that language early on, and I think that's an easy place to start. Well, I've learned so much from you, and I know our listeners have too. Before we wrap up, is there any last little takeaway you want to leave with our listeners before we jump into our game? Well, I think there's two things. One I already said, don't wait to teach morphology. Start early, but also that English isn't random, so we don't want to say anymore like, "English is crazy. That's why it's spelled the way it is." Let's take that out. There is logic to it, and really morphology and etymology can help us understand that, understand why they're spelled the way they are. Our language is morphophonemic, which means it's built on both meaning and sound. So morphology, phonology. So when we teach morphology, we're helping students understand this, and understand why words are spelled the way they are, even if the pronunciation doesn't match the spelling. So yes, let's take out that English is crazy phrase out of our language here. I have to say that I was guilty of that too. I think we started teaching it about the same time I graduated in 2003, and that is just I was taught that have is a funky word, and it's a rule breaker, and it's not actually following any rules. And now, of course, we know it is following a rule, so we just need to know what the rule is. Exactly. Exactly. Well, we have a tradition with all of our guests, Sarah. We always wrap up with a game we like to call quick picks. So I'm going to give you two choices, and you're going to tell me which one you would choose. And I have to admit, just spoiler alert in advance, I have a feeling I know what a couple of these answers are going to be, but there might be some curveballs here. So the first one is, would you rather choose to teach prefixes or suffixes first? Suffixes first. The morpheme "un" or the morpheme "ree?" This one is a tough one, because both are pretty transparent, and they're so, I don't know, I don't know if I can choose. I think I might do them like back to back. Would you teach one morpheme at a time, or teach a few related morphemes together? This is another hard one. I think I usually do one morpheme at a time, but I also, I kind of don't too, because they always come together. I think I'll say one morpheme, but I don't know, do I actually do that? That's a hard one. I'm like reflecting now. You're allowed to break the rules, it's okay. The last one for you, would you tie morphology to spelling or tie morphology to vocabulary? I do more about tying it to spelling, but I need to do more with vocabulary, and that's what Michelle has helped me see, is like how to tie it more to vocabulary. But I think just the nature, because I struggle with spelling, I tend to do it, I tie it a lot with spelling. Well, I know that our listeners are going to be excited to connect with you. Can you please tell us where they can find you in all the places, and tell us a little bit more about your course as well? Okay, well, thank you. I'm really active on Instagram at Snippets by Sarah, but if you want to sit down with a cup of coffee and really dig in, I have a ton of content on my blog, because it's been there for a while, and you can find that at sarasnippets.com. And if you want to learn more about morphology, my course with Michelle is coming out very, very soon. Right now, we just have a link to get on our mailing list so that we can tell you when it's coming out. But that should be really soon, and I'm so excited. If you take this course, it'll be, I mean, we're going into all the things with morphology because we're both huge morphology nerds. And I will definitely be part of that class. So I'm really excited. I'm excited to take the class too, and we'll make sure to add the links to all of those places down below in the show notes so that people can access them very easily. I am so grateful to you, Sarah. It was wonderful getting to chat with you and geek out on morphology together. Thank you for this. It was such a gift, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much. I love the opportunity. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Science of Reading Formula podcast. If you loved what you heard today, I would be deeply grateful if you would take a minute to leave a review and share it with someone else who would benefit from it too. Sharing is the best way to help this podcast grow and create a powerful community that's changing the world one student success story at a time.