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Contact: Peter Bowers PO Box 295 Wolfe Island, ON, Canada K0H 2Y0
Phone: (613) 385-2084
Email: wordworkskingston@gmail.com
WordWorks Newsletters & Resources
WW Newsletter #99: SWI in context -- Greta Thunberg & Climate Crisis
Click HERE for this Newsletter.
This Newsletter was inspired by my trip to Australia that happened to occur in the midst of their catastrophic climate crisis fueled fires. I use a speech by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg as the context for a large archive of possible orthographic inquiries. Teachers can use those resources to investigate the words I highlight in the context of this speech, or in any context they choose. My hope is that this Newsletter provides a rich example of how SWI can be used as leverage for studying and understanding about any subject area.
As another example of SWI as leverage for content learning, see this post on The Language of Math: Using SWI to teach math vocabulary by Nancy Martin. She is the Reading Department Chair at Eagle Hill School - a school for dyslexic students and a recent alumni of my summer courses who has been studying hard for a couple of years now with her colleagues.
Click HERE for this Newsletter. The main resource it points to is a new video addressing the deeply misunderstood topic of the explicit instruction of grapheme-phoneme correspondences from the very beginning in structured word inquiry. Also see the Newsletter for a number of orthographic investigations and updates on SWI workshops around the world.
Click HERE for an inspiring story from a tutor that illustrates the fact that far from inhibiting the learning of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, studying these conventions within the context of morphology is a necessary condition for making sense of how grapheme-phoneme correspondences work.
Revised <sign> Lesson in “Teaching How the Written Word Works”
Books printed after May 2013 already include the revised lesson. You know you have the revised version if you see on <ify> suffix on the <sign> lesson on page 8. Even if you have the revised version, I recommend you download this pdf to gain from the explanation that helped me understand why this revision was needed.
(Scientific Word Investigation)
“Word Scientists” look for the deepest word structures that make sense of the greatest number of words.
Click HERE for background on SWI.
Marcia Henry on WordWorks:
Marcia Henry is past president of The International Dyslexia Association
and former director of the Center for Educational Research on Dyslexia at San Jose State University
sign + al → signal
re + sign → resign
de + sign + ate → designate
sign + ate/ + ure → signature
do + es → does
do + ne → done
do + ing → doing
go + es → goes
go + ne → gone
go + ing → going
Making sense of how words work by investigating morphology, etymology and phonology.
English base <sign> from Latin root signum
"mark, token, indication, symbol”
Applying the Principle of Backwards Design from UbD to Structured Word Inquiry
enduring understandings of how the written word works.
"This article by Pete Bowers makes some interesting connections between UbD, Real Spelling and the development of critical thinking skills in students."
Bill and Ochan Powell - Education Across Frontiers
Resources for Spelling-Out and Writing-Out Word Structure with Word Sums
REVISED (May 25, 2018)
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Click here for information on spelling-out word sums including a free pdf guide for teachers who want to use this process for learning, instruction and assessment.
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Spelling-Out Word Structure: Targeting Central Concepts, Assessment & Instruction
See a new article and video addressing these ideas all building on a practical lesson growing from a Grade 1 student’s question, “Why is their an <h> in school? You don’t hear it.”
Click here for a video of an on-line Skype session addressing this topic with Grade 2 teachers and an article addressing how this topic links to the UbD.
Must See Links
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A New Hub for Research Related to SWI: Jeff Bowers’ Blog
More importantly, Jeff does a great job of explaining the context of this research in his blog posts. I highly recommend exploring this page often, and adding your comments to the discussion!
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Scientific Word Investigations in the Classroom & Beyond
Click here for a video of Nueva pre-school teacher Carolee Fucigna as they create a morphological web on the base <rain>. See how straight froward it is to investigate morphological families with readers and non-readers.
Click here for a post from Rebecca Loveless on “Word Bag Excitement” that offers teachers a sense of this excellent activity for studying word families modeled on Lyn Anderson’s work. This is a great reference for jumping in. Rebecca’s site has many more posts to explore too.
Click here for Mary Beth Steven’s brilliant recent post “Outer Beauty Attracts, but Inner Beauty Captivates.” This is a wonderful way to compare studying real “word families” compared to words that simply rhyme. Explore her whole blog!
Click here for an inspiring post, “Comprehending Spelling” from Sue Hegland’s excellent blog, “Learning About Spelling”. This is a short, accessible and eloquent case for why we should do the obvious -- teach our written word works.
Tools for making matrices
Free trial versions of matrix making software for morphological analysis available for download
Click here for a “User’s Guide” for working with this computer tool including links to tutorial films, complementary resources and links to related research.
Video introducing the new “Mini Matrix Maker”
Watch this video to see how teachers and students can easily create matrices from word sums on Mac or PC computers with Neil Ramsden’s “Mini Matrix Maker”.
See an introduction to WordWorks and Structured Word Inquiry
(including videos) here
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On-Line Resources Supporting Structured Word Inquiry
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✦Latdict (Investigate twin bases!)
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Classroom Blogs
Key Links
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Related Websites
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✦Beyond the Word (Lyn Anderson, AUS)
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✦LEX (Gina Cooke)
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✦Language Innerviews (Scott Mills)
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✦Word Torque (Fiona Hamilton, Bangkok)
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✦Learning About Spelling (Sue Hegland)
<s> → /s/
E.g., sign, signal, assign
<s> → /z/
E.g., design, resign,
does, goes
Explore Lyn Anderson’s excellent blog with illustrations and resources about structured word inquiry for all ages at this link .
Lyn has been developing her understanding and practice in this area for over a decade. Her lessons and ideas for morphological instruction from the start are just exceptional.
Structured Word Inquiry at
The Nueva School
Click HERE to see the page on the Nueva School website describing how Structured Word Inquiry has transformed the instruction at this top US private school. It includes a video illustrating how this work is integrated across the grades.
WordWorks Literacy Centre
Spelling it like it is!
Nothing motivates like understanding
Free, weekly open-ended on-line SWI sessions with Pete
(Mondays North America; Tuesday Mornings Australia)
With so many teachers, tutors, parents and kids stuck at home, I have decided to offer a weekly time people can enter a video conference “Zoom Room” to ask questions, follow others questions and just discuss orthographic investigations people may be interested in.
There is no sign up, just a regular date and time to join. I tried to pick a time that works for as wide a range of locations as possible.
Adults are welcome to have their kids join the sessions as well.
Click THIS LINK for more details. Note that the times given apply every week, the date is just for the first class. 
Click THIIS LINK for a document (screen shot below) reflecting on learning from the first session that is filled with links to free resources to build understanding of scientific word investigation.
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Next Courses beginning Aug 26 or soon after
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❖All courses listed below begin at 7:30 pm EST
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❖All dates for North America
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❖Cost in USD
5 Session General SWI Course ($200 USD)
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Wednesdays: Aug 26, Sept, 2, 9, 16, 23
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Click HERE for a detailed description of this course. Click HERE to email me and register/inquire.
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This is the course I recommend the seriously curious about SWI. The structure of short weekly sessions provides an accessible entry point for novices. Those with experience in SWI find it a rich way to revisit, refine and deepen their understanding oft he orthographic concepts and instructional practices of SWI.
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By the end of each session participants have practical lesson ideas for teaching at any age. Questions that come up between classes are addressed in the lessons and correspondences between classes.
Single Session SWI Courses targeting specific SWI Topics
Click HERE for document with detailed descriptions of these courses
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•Aug 27: Spelling-Out Orthography (3 hrs -- $60 USD)
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Click HERE to email me and register/inquire
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This course goes into detail of the practice of writing-out-loud, spelling-out-loud and taping-out orthographic structure. It also provides an introduction to cognitive load theory and how these practices - and SWI in general builds directly on the recommendations of this well-established theory of learning.
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Click HERE for the page on my website with more detail on this practice.
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•Sept 3: Working with “Teaching How the Written Word Works” ( 2 hrs --$50)
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Click HERE to email me and register/inquire.
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In this course, I work through the first series of lessons in my resource book for educators/parents. This course will help educators make more effective use of the lessons in the book, but also clarify key concepts or the interrelation of morphology, etymology and phonology. I also show how teachers can integrate lessons from this book with their own content areas of study.
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•2-part Investigating Etymological/Morphological families, constructing matrices & reading Etymonline: Aug 28, Sept 4 (2 hours each) ($100)
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Click HERE to email me and register/inquire.
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This new course is provoked by request from participants in my 5-session course as a way to spend more time on these essential aspects of SWI. As people get started with SWI the importance of the relationship between morphology and etymology become more and more apparent.
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It is often seeing a matrix and word sums that draws people to want to study SWI. So many spellings are made understandable by seeing the interrelated morphological structure of words with these tools. But to fully engage with and understand SWI, educators/parents need to be able to identify potentially related words and use these tools to investigate words on your own. This 2-part course provides the content, tools and practice to get people going on their own independent orthographic investigations. Two sessions allow me to guide people through a step by step process that can be applied to investigations of any set of words. You will then be able to practice on your own with planned activities and your own words, and then return to the second session to revisit and dig deeper.
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Click HERE for a video addressing these concepts (screen shot below, left).
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Click HERE for a video in which I talk with Doug Harper (author of Etymonline) about questions about one of his entries. It’s such a joy to learn with Doug and his dictionary!
New On-line, real-time (not recorded) SWI courses
with Pete Bowers
Click HERE for detailed descriptions of the on-line courses I offer.
