Somehow the conversation switched to the spelling of the word <likely>. Again a mistaken theory turned into a brilliant learning opportunity - with the expert guidance of a teacher equipped with accurate orthographic understanding and appropriate tools. A student suggested there should not be an <e> in this <likely>. Again Alieda used the word sum to work through the spelling with the class. With the word sum exposing the structure of <likely>, a student exclaimed, “Oh! Of course you have to keep the <e>. You’re only adding a consonant suffix.” Alieda then reinforced the pattern for when silent <e>s are dropped with a word sum of the base <like> taking the vowel suffix <-ing>.
Again, a pattern this class has been studying is reinforced in the engaging context of solving the mystery of interesting spellings noted by smart word detectives. Look at the images of just some of the references these children have been creating and using to develop their understanding of the written word. They have an ever growing prefix, suffix and base chart (notice how many have been added by children). A vowel chart hangs at the ready. Among many uses, this chart reminds students of the distinction between vowel and consonant suffixes. Flow charts are in common use as students practice the patterns they are learning.
Also take note of the phonological lessons that grow from this morphological investigation. The word <like> uses a ‘long <i>’ pronunciation. I presume this is why we see examples of words representing all the long vowel sounds on this same chart paper. Also note that the only obvious use of the single, silent <e> to mark that a previous vowel “represents its name” is in the word <pipe>. How do we know that the <a> in <taking> is long? Oh, yes, we need to have access to the knowledge that the base of this word has a single silent <e> that provides a pronunciation cue even though the vowel suffix <-ing> is ‘hiding it’ at the moment. That same cue also works for <used>, but might be harder to see at first.
The Venn diagram at right shows that the word detective, problem-solving model is also applied to phonological patterns in this class. This activity flows for a theme in Real Spelling on “The phonology of <c>”. Here, the proper linguistic symbols are used to represent graphemes and phonemes. Organizing words into groups according to whether they use the <c> grapheme for the /s/ or /k/ phonemes generates the motivation for the word detective work to discover the pattern.
Alieda Nuvoloni teaches a Grade 1/2 class at St. Marguerite and has been using the Real Spelling tool kit for a few months.
Alieda had set up one of her regular practice edits for her class on the chart paper shown at right. You can see a number of planned errors that the children were able to correct. However, the most exciting orthographic investigations turned out to be the unplanned ones. A student noticed the spelling <bodies> in this text and thought that they found a mistake when they realized that the base
had to be <body>. The student suggested that the spelling should be <*bodyes> (The asterisk is a symbol used to mark a misspelling).
Alieda honoured the child’s excellent thinking by writing down the hypothesized spelling. The class then framed their thinking about this spelling with a word sum. They had recently worked with the patterns for changing <y> to <i>. They had flow charts in the room that they could use to remind them of the pattern. They referred to the relevant flow chart, and saw that in this case there was no good reason to keep the <y> in the base, so it had to change to <i>. This proved that the spelling in their teacher’s text was correct.
Notice how the use of tools such as the word sum, and practiced language such as base and suffix, provide such support for this kind of exploratory analysis. These students have been taught these patterns, tools and terms. Now they refine that understanding through practice in a relevant context. Further, in this class, making a mistake is celebrated as a learning opportunity with no sense of embarrassment.
Grade 1 Word Detectives in Kingston!
WordWorking with “Sound” and Spelling in a Grade One Class
WordWorks was hired to inservice three teachers at John XXlll Catholic school. While Pete was teaching a Grade One class on the pattern for when to use <c> for /s/ or /k/, a student offered the misspelling <*saycl> for the word <cycle>.
Follow the links below for...
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•An article from Pete Bowers about understanding the source of this student’s misspelling, and the wider instructional implications of correctly or incorrectly analyzing this type of spelling error
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•A video and audio clip response to Pete’s article from Melvyn Ramsden that clearly illustrates the phonology and phonetics of what schools call the ‘long i’ sound.
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Click here for his analysis of this error, and to see why Pete calls this a “brilliant mistake” that shows a student who is very attuned to pronunciation. Don’t miss Melvyn’s excellent video and audio response follows at the bottom of the page.
After Pete Bowers taught just one word structure lesson in her class, Grade 3 teacher Irene Malinowski (who also attended Melvyn’s two day workshop) jumped into making morphological word webs with her students. These few images are enough to reveal the intellectual engagement and the simple joy of discovery we give students as they learn how to link meaningfully related words and build a generative foundation of word knowledge.
Grade 2 and 3 Word Detectives!
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A Grade 2 teacher helps students understand when <c> represents /s/ and when it represents /k/.
Copyright Susan and Peter Bowers 2008
Click here to link to more videos.
Structured Word Inquiry
in Primary Classrooms
Scenes from Grade K-3 Classrooms:
Explore this page to see illustrations of structured word inquiry in K - 3 classrooms around the world. You will find illustrations of the kinds of activities and reference charts that provide a rich foundation from which teachers and students investigate the linguistic structures of the oral and written word. Look for examples of investigations into morphological, phonological and etymological patterns. Please use and expand on the examples provided here, and then share your work to support other teachers with still more classroom activities that make sense of how words work.
Morphology & Phonology from the start
It is important to understand that my emphasis on morphology from the start of classroom instruction in no way signals a de-emphasis on the importance of instruction about grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) correspondences. To the contrary, one of the reasons to teach morphology is to make sure that we teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences accurately. We can’t really explain grapheme choices for many words without reference to the organizing structure of morphology. Click here for more on this topic...
Videos of instruction of morphology and phonology
Video: Introducing the matrix and word sum in kindergarten
Click the video to the left to see a Skype session I lead with kindergarten students at the International School of Beijing. In this video, I introduce these young children to to the matrix and the word sum as a way to provide explicit, structured instruction of morphology and phonology. I draw from a big book they had been reading to introduce these concepts.
Click here if embedded video does not play.
Video: Investigating digraphs and trigraphs within word sums in Grade 1
Click the video to the left to see a lesson by Skot Caldwell as he uses text from a story they have been reading to identify “letter teams” with in word sums. Note how automated it is for these students to spell graphemes and morphemes out-loud to show that they recognize these structures. See the phoneme-grapheme chart that this class has constructed over the year that marks the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they have identified so far with example words. Watch until the end to see two students proudly add a new digraph they discovered for the “long <e>” after this class ended. Not only does Skot’s instruction point students to grapheme-phoneme correspondences that he selects, but it gives students the ability to identify digraphs and trigraphs on their own, and proudly add that knowledge to the bank of knowledge of the class.
Click here if embedded video doesn’t play.
The International School of Beijing is one of the schools that I’ve been working with for some time now. Sarah Smith, a teacher at ISB contacted me to share a video she and fellow teacher, Fiona Menichelli, captured of their Grade 1 classes performing a delightful musical morphological presentation at a school assembly. I agree whole-heartedly with Sarah’s assessment when she wrote “...We think they did a great job for a mid-September assembly of barely 6-year-olds!” This video helps show how straight forward it can be for students to become confident with the concepts of bases, prefixes and suffixes and how they operate in words they encounter all the time.
When I present my academic research at scientific conferences, a common question I am asked is how would you teach morphology in a Grade 1 class. Few researchers or teachers have seen examples of this instruction in action, so I understand why this is such a common question. Morphology has been largely absent typical classroom instruction (Henry, 2003; Nunes & Bryant, 2006). At the same time, there has been an assumption in the research literature (e.g. Adams, 1990) that morphological instruction should not be incorporated until upper elementary. For this reason it is particularly important for people to understand that current research evidence suggests that morphology is particularly effective for young and less able readers (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010), but also that teachers have access to examples of effective ways to teach morphology at a young age. This images, videos and examples on this page are intended to provide teachers with access to a wide variety of examples of just this kind of instruction.
Click here for a tutorial clip from Real Spelling explaining content and function words, and the spelling conventions that will help you identify them.
Instead of a typical “word wall” this Grade 1 class has a “word structures wall”. High frequency words are not listed here in alphabetical order to memorize. Instead they are among the words used to illustrate patterns they are studying.
Consider at the integration of morphology and phonology instruction illustrated in these three images taken from a classroom in Ghana during my last visit.
A matrix for the content word <know> reveals the meaning/structure connection to <knowledge> despite the pronunciation change. This matrix also sets up teaching of the homophone principle which contrasts the spelling of the function word <no>.
Since this class already had worked with the base word <know>, I knew (not new!) that they were ready to study the grapheme <n> and <kn> for /n/. They were quite comfortable with the statement that <kn> can only be initial.
Since I was showing them a digraph, I continued with another phoneme /k/, which can be represented by a number of graphemes, including the digraph <ck>.
This is from a lesson I taught using the Real Spelling Theme from Kit K Theme D on the phonology of <c> . This is one of the themes Melvyn has posted as examples of the 84 teaching themes in the Tool Box. Check it out at this link!
Can you sort out the pattern this Grade 1 class is investigating about bases ending in a final /l/ pronunciation?
One of the pictures in the slide show from my last Ghana workshop provides the answer if you are curious!
Click either of the images below for an introductory document on the integration of handwriting and spelling / word study instruction.
The image at right is from a Grade 1 class investigates the why the two <e>s in <been> do not contradict the convention that the <ee> digraph always represents the long <e>. Click here for a Newsletter describing this investigation.
Grade 1 morphological matrices, word sums and webs!
Below are a series of images from a Grade one work from teacher Sarah Smith at the International School of Beijing. Note the excellent us of Smart Boards.
The images below show use of creative use of our WordWorks book “Making Word Webs from the Word Matrix” Consider all the critcal thinking and vocabulary development encouraged by sorting words according to structure and meaning. Again, the Smart Board proves to be a useful tool for Structured Word Inquiry - as does old fashioned cutting and gluing paper!
Here the teacher has created their own forms to help students investigate and explain the meaning and structure of complex words. Wonderful stuff!
Long ago, I asked Lyn 
if she would write a brief letter describing things she has learned about teaching with Real Spelling in the younger grades. The feedback on that letter when I share with schools is always very positive. Click the image to the right to download that document.
Note! Lyn and Jim Anderson were instrumental in organizing my 3-day workshop with Chapters International at their school Oct 7-9, 2011. A special bonus of this workshop is that participants will get to learn with Jim and Lyn and see the kind of work they have inspired at their school over the years. Jim is the elementary principal, so administrators are sure to have lots of questions that he is particularly well suited to answer. Sign up soon!
Video: Orthographic Phonology -- Ways to write /f/
In the video below, Lyn Anderson (Anglo-American School of Sofia), leads our group at a WW Summer Course in 2010 on a structured word inquiry for primary kids on ways to write /f/.