The Problem
Have you had your child come home from school with a list of words to memorize? Do you want to pull your hair out in frustration watching your child struggle to learn using memorization instead of understanding? Isn't it true that when we understand the reason behind a spelling, we have it for life, whereas memorising something will last only as long as our brain can hold it and adds to cognitive fatigue and confusion.
Calling a spelling that one can not explain an ‘exception’ is simply intellectual resignation. - Peter Bowers
When you have a bad orthographic memory you are going to struggle when you're given more than one choice to spell a sound. Memorizing "irregular" or "sight" words is taxing an already overwhelmed system and sets the students up for failure and self esteem issues.
The Solution
A key feature of SWI that distinguishes it from phonics is that grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC's) are taught in the context of morphology, at the same time, because they interact.
When you give the words a Structured Inquiry approach, instantly you have meaning and understanding! Curiosity and self esteem in the student are harnessed and encouraged with this learning method, as our students realize that they now understand what many of their teachers do not! When our students are trained to investigate words, it transforms the way they look at spelling. Now when they come across a word they don't know how to spell, they get excited!
There is fun to be had in investigating words that have surprising spellings!
How to Investigate Spelling
Become a Word Detective!
We believe that English spelling"
- is logical,
- it represents meaning,
- and it uses consistent spelling of bases and affixes even when pronunciation shifts
Word detectives investigate spelling using these four steps:
- Look for known affixes and identify what meanings you know from the word parts.
- Spell (instead of pronounce) morphemes, remembering that pronunciation shifts but spelling of affixes and bases are consistant.
- Use structure and meaning to test spelling hypotheses.
- Use word sums and matrices to investigate connections of structure and meaning
