Lighting the way for educators to teach
spelling, reading, writing, and vocabulary
with Structured Word Inquiry

Instead of spelling exceptions,

SWI offers spelling explanations.

Structured Word Inquiry does away with rules, tricks, and memorization, and replaces them with a linguistic approach to spelling.

When we broaden our scope to consider the meaning, structure, and history of a word alongside the pronunciation, the mysteries of spelling are revealed. Integrating morphological instruction with phoneme-grapheme instruction gives students a deeper and more accurate understanding of our language.

Readers and writers of all ages and abilities benefit from this scientifically-based literacy framework. Finally spelling can make sense!

I offer clear, practical courses and resources that help educators deepen their knowledge and begin teaching with SWI right away.

Resources and events to support your learning

Start learning here, learn matrix word family

Fountain pen and text. Learn to write with ease and flow in on-demand course

Blog Posts

Feb 2, 2019
5 min

Yours or ours?

This past week in first grade we took on a couple of function words for our investigation. When we first started our SWI journey, these...

25 views0 comments

Nov 19, 2017
4 min

Diving deeper into Word Bags

After the exciting Word Bag lesson that sparked so much interest, the teachers came to me with some big questions. One of the children...

27 views0 comments

Oct 21, 2017
4 min

Word Bag Excitement

Lyn Anderson (Beyond the Word) first introduced us to the joy of the Word Bag game several years ago now. It’s a simple teaching...

29 views0 comments

Sep 4, 2017
3 min

First Day Word Stories

The new school year has begun at The Nueva School where I am the SWI Coach, and already stories about words have been flying my way. The...

25 views0 comments

May 6, 2017
4 min

Video: The “Rain” Family

People often ask about using Structured Word Inquiry with young children. How does it work? Can they really understand morphology and the...

10 views0 comments

Feb 23, 2017
6 min

Engaging Curiosity

This is the first post in my series called “First Steps,” which is intended for anyone just beginning their journey with Structured Word...

10 views0 comments

Dec 14, 2016
3 min

The Base + ic + s

I recently did a lesson with a class of 3rd and 4th graders, whom I visit once a week. This was only their second lesson with Structured...

14 views0 comments

Nov 21, 2016
2 min

Submerge

“If it’s important, it will come up again.” Pete Bowers has used this statement thousands of times, I’m sure, when teachers ask questions...

6 views0 comments

Nov 2, 2016
4 min

Substructure – Making the Abstract Concrete

For the past few months I’ve been enjoying the privilege of working with two classrooms of first graders each week. Most of these...

7 views0 comments

Lighting the way for educators to teach spelling, reading, writing, and vocabulary with Structured Word Inquiry

I offer clear, practical courses and resources that help educators deepen their knowledge and begin teaching with SWI right away.

Resources and events to support your learning

Blog Posts

Subscribe here to get my latest posts

Lighting the way for educators to teach
spelling, reading, writing, and vocabulary
with Structured Word Inquiry