Structured Word Inquiry:

(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.

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”

About WordWorks

See an introduction to WordWorks and Structured Word Inquiry

(including videos) here

1. On-Line Resources Supporting    Structured Word Inquiry
   

2. ✦Etymonline
   

3. ✦Word Searcher
   

4. ✦Word Microscope
   

5. ✦Mini MatrixMaker
   

6. ✦Latdict (Investigate twin bases!)
   

7. Classroom Blogs
   

8. ✦Lyn Anderson’s Early Years blog
   

9. ✦Skot Caldwell’s Grade 1 Class
   

10. ✦Skot Caldwell’s current 4/5 Class
    

11. ✦Jen Munnerlyn’s Grade 1-5
    

12. ✦Dan Allen’s Grade 5 Class
    

13. ✦Mrs. Steven’s Grade 5 Class
    

14. ✦Ann Whiting’s Grade 7 Class

Key Links

1. Related Websites
   

2. ✦Real Spelling Tool Box 2
   

3. ✦Real Spellers
   

4. ✦Beyond the Word 
   

5. (Lyn Anderson, AUS)
   

6. ✦LEX (Gina Cooke)
   

7. ✦Rebecca Loveless
   

8. ✦Mary Beth Stevens
   

9. ✦Literacy Dr. (Jennifer Petrich)
   

10. ✦Language Insights
    

11. ✦Word Torque (Fiona Hamilton, Bangkok)
    

12. ✦Learning About Spelling (Sue Hegland)
    

13. ✦Sound Literacy
    

14. ✦WW on YouTube

1. WordWorks Teacher Resource Book
   

2. WordWorks Newsletters
   

3. Beneath the Surface of Words (Sue Hegland)
   

4. Backpocket Words (Gail Venable)

1. Workshop Fees & Services
   

2. (On-Line & On-Site Workshops & Tutoring)

1. Getting started
   

2. ✦About WordWorks (practice & research)
   

3. ✦Structured Word Inquiry (SWI)
   

4. ✦In the Classroom K - 2
   

5. ✦In the Classroom 3 - 4
   

6. ✦Spelling-Out Word Structure

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.

Free, weekly open-ended on-line SWI sessions with Pete

(Mondays 5pm EST,  Tuesday Mornings Australia)

Recent articles on SWI and the Research & Extensive Interview

Structured Word Inquiry (SWI): Literacy instruction that makes sense of English spelling for students of all ages and abilities (Bowers. P, in press)

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.

More WordWorks Resources

Revised <sign> Lesson in “Teaching How the Written Word Works”

I have posted a pdf at this link on Real Spellers with a revised <sign> lesson after learning that what I had presented as an <-ify> suffix can be analyzed further. That pdf shares the evidence that convinced me to make this change. I also use this learning experience to share a key feature about matrices and word sums.

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.