Does your child come home from school with a list of words to memorise, only to struggle with remembering them? It’s frustrating to see them work harder without understanding the why behind the spelling. Memorisation can lead to confusion, cognitive fatigue, and doesn’t last. Understanding spelling, however, sticks for life. As Peter Bowers says, calling an unexplainable spelling an “exception” is simply giving up.
For kids with weak orthographic memory, traditional memorisation methods lead to frustration and self-esteem issues. Sight words and irregular spellings add unnecessary stress to an already overwhelmed system.
The Solution
At the core of our approach is Structured Word Inquiry (SWI), which teaches spelling through understanding why words are spelled the way they are. By connecting grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) with morphology, students can make meaningful connections between word parts, shifting from memorisation to comprehension.
Through SWI, students become word detectives. They develop curiosity and confidence as they investigate spelling, understanding that English spelling follows logical patterns. When faced with an unfamiliar word, students get excited to explore and uncover its structure and meaning.
Become a Word Detective
We believe spelling is logical, meaningful, and consistent. Our word detectives follow these steps:
- Identify known affixes and meanings.
- Spell morphemes (ignoring pronunciation shifts).
- Use structure and meaning to test hypotheses.
- Connect structure and meaning using word sums and matrices.
