That
Contact: Peter Bowers PO Box 295 Wolfe Island, ON, Canada K0H 2Y0
Phone: (613) 385-2084
Email: wordworkskingston@gmail.com
(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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(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
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Beneath the Surface of Words (Sue Hegland)
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Backpocket Words (Gail Venable)
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 5pm EST, Tuesday Mornings Australia)
NOTE! No sessions Oct 17 or 24 Due to conflicts with other workshops! I will be back Oct 31!
Recent articles on SWI and the Research & Extensive Interview
Click HERE for a pre-print of this article that will appear in the Patoss Summer 2022 Bulletin, vol 35, no 1. I think this is the shortest, most accessible article I have explaining the orthographic conventions addressed by SWI, and the place of SWI with regard to the theory and research on literacy instruction.
A promising new tool for literacy instruction: The morphological matrix (Ng, Bowers, P.N. & Bowers J. B., 2022)
Click HERE for a new article that is the first to investigate the role of the matrix. We show empirical evidence that presenting words in a base-centric model (the matrix) is more effective for memory than presenting words organized around affixes.
Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) Teaches Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences More Explicitly Than Phonics Does: An open letter to Jennifer Buckingham and the reading research community
Given some serious mischaracterizations and misunderstandings about SWI in peer-reviewed research, I recently published an article on PsyArXiv that you can download HERE.
See this new 15-min video I made to clarify the qualitative difference between the teaching of grapheme-phoneme correspondences in Phonics and SWI.
Interview on SWI with Education Podcast ‘Pedagogy Non-Grata”
I was invited to do an interview to discuss the theory, practice and research of SWI on this podcast. The host was new to SWI which provided a rich opportunity to respond to the kinds of questions novices to this work typically have. See Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE. I recommend that you follow the links to videos of the interview as it is much more effective to describe orthographic conventions while looking the linguistic tools we use in SWI. Part 2 is divided into two videos -- the last one emphasizes the research.
This Newsletter points to the new article I published addressing misunderstandings and misrepresentations about SWI in the research (See more including abstract above.)
I point to rich new resources from Lyn Anderson and Ann Whiting (Caught in the Spell of Words) for teachers/tutors working with SWI.
I also point to resources related to learning with the newly available Tool Box 2 that I highlighted in the previous WW Newsletter #100.
WordWorks Newsletters & Resources
Some gems from the WW archives!
WW Newsletter #101: The return of the Real Spelling Tool Box 2 and more!
Click HERE for this Newsletter.
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.
Click THIS LINK for details.
I began offering this free weekly session at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in an effort to ensure teachers and parents had a place to pose questions about SWI whether or not they could afford to attend more formal on-line courses.
The response has been so rewarding (and fun) that I’ve only missed a handful Mondays since the first session on March 23rd, 2020. I plan to continue indefinitely even once we are past the pandemic.
There is no sign up, just a regular date and time to join. Most weeks we simply address questions people bring. Some weeks we have a special guest, or planned investigation to share. Every week has novices and experts who come to share their questions/experience, or just listen in.
Click THIIS LINK for a document reflecting on learning from the first session that is filled with links to free resources to build understanding of scientific word investigation.
WordWorks Newsletter #109
Click HERE to download this issue packed with resources including lessons I created for model lessons in workshops, links to research related to SWI and much more.
Upcoming On-Line Courses with Pete
Click HERE for the flyer with a detailed description of this course.
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Email Pete to register <peterbowers1@mac.com>
An SWI course organized by PATOSS
(UK speech and language organization)
5-session General SWI Course Tuesdays Feb 7, 14, 21, 28 & March 7
UK time: 3:30 - 5:00pm
North America:
EST (Toronto, NYC) 10:30 - noon
PST (Vancouver, San Fran) 7:30 - 9 am
Click here for more information and registration from PATOSS
Note: Because this is through another organization, the cost of this course is more than my than when I host myself. One advantage of these courses is that they will record the sessions and make them available for people to review or see if they can’t attend a session. They will be available for a limited time after the course finishes.
My own courses are never recorded. I also don’t do as many courses at this time of day.
PATOSS is a leading organization in the UK for those working with students with speech and language deficits. The enthusiastic response to my invited talk for their 2022 annual conference and related article (HERE) that motivated them to contact me to do courses for their organization.
Consider these messages about the effect of my courses:
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•My daughter is dyslexic and your course totally changed her life. After her tutor took your course, they both spent hours together breaking words apart and understanding how they work. They have so much fun doing this each session, and my daughter now reads full books at her grade-level! So Thank you!
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•I wish our classes did not have to end, I am learning so much and believe in this so much. I see my kids that I've been working with now finally understanding and reading and problem solving and having fun! I have so many stories and not enough time to tell them all, but every single one of them is positive and full of smiles!
The message below is in my previous WW Newsletter (#108) which shares stories of transformational learning from teachers very new to SWI. This one is from an SLP whose only support for SWI was my 5-Session General SWI course last March and a copy of my book.
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Hi Pete, I'm absolutely LOVING your book - Teaching How the Written Word Works! I've taught two of my more challenging clients how to be 'word scientists' and they've gotten soooo excited (after 1 session!). I could actually see the light bulbs turn on :D My younger client actually jumped out of his chair he was so excited-it was amazing!
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Today was the second session with my younger client and we started making hypotheses from our observations...He's excited to hear back from you... Btw, he's a pretty precocious 4th grader who's been really tired of learning how to spell, so you've completely changed his mind after 2 sessions!
Click THIS LINK for details about my on-line and in-person PD, fees etc.
Click THIS LINK for descriptions of all my on-line courses.
