Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) is the phrase I used to describe the instruction I used in the vocabulary teaching study (Bowers & Kirby, 2010) that showed generative vocabulary learning and provided the basis for my teacher resource “Teaching How The Written Word Works”. SWI builds on the simple premise that literacy instruction should accurately reflect how our writing system works. In SWI we apply the principles of scientific inquiry to study how English spelling actually works. The amazing thing is that when we take that scientific approach, it becomes evident that English spelling actually makes perfect sense.

In SWI courses we learn to work with linguistic tools like those sampled above that make sense not only of the meaning connections between related words, but also how those connections help us make sense of grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Click HERE for a brief introduction to SWI research and practice.

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Structured Word Inquiry On-Line Courses

Inform your literacy instruction with orthographic understanding

Presenter Pete Bowers, Phd

Founder of WordWorks, teacher & researcher who introduced the phrase

“structured word inquiry”

Email Pete <peterbowers1@mac.com> to inquire about joining or starting any of the courses described on the next pages.

On-Line SWI CoursesThe SWI community has been working with Zoom for years now. I lead workshops with schools and on-line courses regularly. In the era of the coronavirus, I have been doing many more on-line courses, and expanded the options.

All of my on-line courses are live, interactive courses that are not recorded. I present investigations and the group is invited to “interrupt” and ask questions at any time. (See illustration at right.)

All of these courses welcome novices and experts in the same sessions. When time allows, I usually stay on-line with those who are interested to discuss more in an informal way after the ‘official time’ is over. While these courses have a fee, also see information on my free weekly “SWI Digital Drop In” HERE.

5-Session SWI CoursesI have been leading these courses for some time. Each session is 1.5 hours, and provides time for participants to try activities between sessions. Participants email questions and during the next session we take up discoveries and questions and move onto relate topics. These are the richest learning opportunities I offer on-line as learners have time to study, reflect, try things in their own context.

Click HERE for a document with more detailed information on these courses.

Cost: $200 USD, $280 CAD for full course.

Email me if you are interested in attending such a course. If you can find a few colleagues interested, we can plan a course according to your schedule.

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Working with ZoomZoom is a free video conference software that is particularly effective for real-time on-line study. People attend sessions from their own computer from all over the world. The screen shot at immediately below shows how Zoom lets me share my screen so that all participants can follow as we work through orthographic investigations during the sessions.

Single-Session, Targeted, Practical SWI Courses(Two 2-hour courses and one 3-hour course)These practical sessions target specific topics teacher/tutor learning. Many students would find these sessions engaging as well. Those working with students/children are welcome to have them join for as much or as little of these sessions as they like at no extra charge. Working with Teaching How the Written Word Works2-hours ($50 USD, $70 CAD)For this session, I take participants through the first series of lessons in my teacher resource book. This process helps teachers/tutors and children deepen their understanding of key orthographic concepts along with language and practices that support lessons in this resource book. Some of the concepts addressed in this 2-hour session include:• Working with the matrix and the word sum• Consistent spelling of morphemes despite pronunciation

shifts• Identifying grapheme-phoneme correspondences that

work not just for one word, but for the pronunciation of all of the members of the morphological family

• The link between the meaning of members of a morphological family and the historical root (drawing on etymological references)

• Morphological problem-solving to test affixes and bases and suffixing conventions

• Introducing spelling-out-loud

Constructing Morphological Matrices and Working with the 4 questions of SWI and Etymonline2-hours ($50 USD, $70 CAD) It is difficult to overstate the importance for the matrix and the word sum in terms of understanding English orthography. They provide a doorway to begin the process of understanding English spelling. Working with matrices frames orthographic study around families of words connected by meaning, structure and history. Working with matrices and word sums help us discover the place of orthographic phonology and etymology in ways that are simply not possible otherwise. We use a science text to identify words to investigate and deepen understand the subject area. We practice using the 4 questions of SWI and the structure and meaning test to guide a number of investigations.

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We then then dive deeply into a specific key word to identify morphological and etymological relatives with the aid of a close reading of Etymonline (meaning test) and word sums (structure test). Once we identify a set of word sums that share the same base element, we will work through the process of constructing a matrix by hand. After completing that investigation I share resources for applying a similar process with other word families and subject areas. This session will prepare participants to work with those additional resources and build your ability to construct matrices on your own that target the word families you are interested in. Crucially, participants will have a deeper understanding of the scientific inquiry process of SWI. We will gain an understanding of how matrices and word sums and etymology can be used to falsify hypotheses of the spelling-meaning connections of words.

Practicing spelling-out-loud, writing-out-loud and tapping out word structure3-hours ($60 USD, $80 CAD)I provided a basic description of this process in the Bowers and Kirby (2010) intervention study that introduce the term structured word inquiry. Not only has my understanding of this process grown over time, but my emphasis on this practice has grown every year since. You can see illustrations and descriptions of this process on my website HERE. This course will go into careful detail about the topic. Participants will see how those that take on this practice are forced to address all the orthographic structures in

words -- morphemes, graphemes and orthographic markers -- as well as any suffixing changes.The 3-hour time for this session provides time to practice this process in real time but also to address key orthographic concepts like orthographic markers that are little understood outside of SWI, and to look at how this practice links to key learning theory such as cognitive load theory. This course would be an excellent follow-up or set up to either of the other single-session courses.

A sample of responses about these Zoom Courses

Working with a struggling studentI just had to share this with you. This was my very first SWI session with a student I have been tutoring for 2 1/2 years. She has ADHD and language learning LDs. We have struggled along in OG with very limited success and a great deal of apathy and disinterest from my student. I have NEVER seen her as engaged as she was today. Formulating arguments for why <cyanide> and <icicle> shared meaning with the base <cycle>, trying to come up with words in the word family herself before I could put my cards down, trying to come up with the

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word sum for <nonrecyclable>. Not once did she ask "can we play the game now?" or "aren't we done yet?" It was amazing!!I'm still on a high an hour later when I used to walk away from our tutoring sessions exhausted and frustrated. The joy of orthographyI 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!Grade 2s teaching their peersMy Tier 2 readers took a 2nd grade class science words, studied them in partner-pairs and invited all second graders to a SWI show and tell day. My kids were teaching 2nd graders baseboards, affixes and the history of their words—it was a lovely sight!Two teachers new to SWI in the older gradesSince my last course with you in October-November, I have been diving into SWI with my tutoring students and my struggling readers in my 6th grade classroom, all learning together. I cannot explain eloquently enough how much my students have grown and how much I am still discovering.I really appreciate the hard work you have done to broaden your knowledge and grow SWI.  I am seeing progress in my 7th and 8th graders when I ask them to read and spell out loud. This technique works for them and they read or spell the words accurately. Sometimes the simple tools are the best!

Comments from participants learning through SWI in in the Nueva Institute and Wolfe Island Summer course...A Grade 1 teacher from the Wildwood School after the Nueva dives in..."I've been talking to you in my head nonstop since leaving the institute. That sounds crazy but what I mean is I can no longer go a day without thinking about a word and wondering where it came from or looking it up or experimenting with how I would break it apart or what the affixes are. I'm currently teaching a summer writing class so I'm using these first graders as my practice round at getting started and they are eating it up. Just a few minutes here and there but it's been so easy to incorporate without needing to really plan it out. I've been taking about it since I came home to everyone! Also, random silly thing. I have NEVER been able to spell the word "definitely" without trying it several times or checking it on my phone and now I can spell it because I can visualize a base word and suffix in it. It's mind boggling that I couldn't before. Today the kids were so excited tapping out words. They're obsessed with beauty and the beast right now and they were having a blast writing sentences that had "beast", "feast", "least" in them completely on their own. I know this is way too much information but I cannot stop thinking about the 3 days I got to spend learning from you and hoping I'll get more of an opportunity… I've been an awful speller my entire life and I never would have imagined leaving a spelling conference so jazzed but I would have gone to that institute even if I wasn't an educator."

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From an ESL teacher who attended a full day Zoom based on-line workshopWordWorks Summer Course alumni, Ken Eiker, is an elementary teacher in New Jersey who has transformed his instruction through his work with SWI. He organized a full-day on-line workshop with me for teachers from his district. He passed on this response from one of the participants. I’ve published it here with permission.Ken,That was the best workshop I have attended for my work in teaching English Language Learners. I have already been able to incorporate the strategies into some of my lessons. I have not yet planned explicit "morphology lessons" but I hope to in the future. As an aside, my son has dyslexia and has special assistance in school. But even he was sent home with a "-sion and -tion" worksheet. It made no sense, what did make sense was to look at is as "-ion" and see the morphemes before that. I learned that in the workshop. He was comparing words such as action, motion and fusion. The ending makes more sense when you see the -ion instead of the -tion/-sion. It helped him immensely to see it that way.Thank you again!KirstenMarie Foley, dyslexic tutor in TorontoMarie is a remarkable tutor in Toronto (contact her here for school PD or on-on-one tutoring if you are in the area!). She has studied intensively with myself, Gina Cooke (LEX) and with Real Spelling. She attended my Wolfe Island Course and Gina’s “Symposium in the Pines” in the same summer.

After that double whammy, she wrote me to reflect on her learning. The first part (in quotes) is what she shared with me that she had sent to Gina. That is followed by a personal reflection to me. While this was referring to learning in the Wolfe Island Summer course, the same ideas are regularly expressed about my on-line courses.From Marie...

"At Wolfe Island this week. Pete was reiterating the concept of orthography being a science. I've heard it before but this time, the impact was different. I finally feel that I can be bold and take a strong stand on teaching how the writing system works. How can we argue when a hypothesis is proven to be accurate? I want to read more of Chomsky and would love to read your dissertation when complete. The more that I know, the bolder I feel."

I also enjoyed seeing how you teach the phonology piece of SWI. That's always been a question of mine...Additionally, the opportunity to study with and support others was just as important as anything else we learned. Now, we have the opportunity to network with new SWI "peeps" and make lifelong friends. I've also begun reading the article that you sent from the Psychology Journal… I think reading research is so important for varied reasons. But for me, it helps to sort through my thought, think things through, to formulate questions, and go forward in my quest for knowledge...Finally, Pete, I appreciated your kind manner in our interactions. You created an atmosphere where people were free to share their thoughts and questions, with no judgement.

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