Our Wildwood, Winter 2019, Volume 44

FEATURE Structured Word Inquiry and the Science of Literacy

She pushes her students’ thinking even more to analyze the discrete word sounds—or phonemes—within a word. “What are the phonemes in ‘tighter’?” Tahnee asks. (The students clearly understand the linguistic term.) She instructs the students to tap out the individual phonemes with two fingers on their forearms while they speak them aloud—“‘t,’ ‘igh,’ ‘t’”—with the “igh” phoneme spoken by running together the names of the three component letters: “ei-gee-aytch.” Confident that they understand this challenging word structure, Tahnee sees an opening to take her Pod students one step further—writing a word on the board she’s confident most of them haven’t seen before: “Sigh.” “How would you pronounce this?” Tahnee asks. The students pronounce it correctly. Before the lesson ends, one eager student raises her hand—prompting an acknowledgment from Tahnee. “I just figured it out!” the girl exclaims. “‘Igh’ is a trigraph.” “You’re right!” Tahnee says, and they add the construction on a wall chart recording what students have discovered on this word hunt. A deep understanding of language is essential to future academic success. Structured Word Inquiry is the newest tool Wildwood provides students of all ages as they forge their own paths down the road of lifelong learning. W

equalization and unequivocal. Then Bowers launches an analysis of the word equation using Etymonline.com—a website that looks initially like an online dictionary but really provides students a portal into etymology—the history and origins of any English word imaginable. Using Etymonline.com, Bowers reveals that the base morpheme of equation—“equa”—is based on the Latin word aequus , meaning “level, even, flat; as tall as, on a level with; friendly, kind, just, fair, equitable, impartial; proportionate; calm, tranquil.” Some students audibly gasp as they make the connection and consider what an equation really is—a mathematical expression that shows the equality of two quantities; it’s why equations are balanced on both sides. What’s more, they now are equipped with the ability to discern the meaning (and spelling) of a slew of other related words to which their future studies will, no doubt, expose them. THE ROAD TO LIFELONG LEARNING Structured Word Inquiry’s strength is its holistic approach. It acknowledges that literacy is based on understanding meaning and structure, as well as sounds—thus complementing the traditional phonics approach, which prioritizes the latter. Sarah Simon, assistant director of elementary school, was an early proponent of SWI. “It helps kids understand that there are reasons why words are spelled the way they are—it makes more sense when you look at their structure,” she explains. “This is essential for early and emerging readers.” “SWI is discussion-rich and follows scientific principles of forming and testing hypotheses to understand the rules underlying the English language,” Sarah continues. It’s a process, she hopes, that teachers and students will use more frequently with practice and growing confidence. Back in Tahnee’s class, her K-1 students are delving more deeply into their excerpted sentence from Charlotte’s Web . Highlighting the word “things” in the sentence, one of her students noticed that “ing” is embedded within it. “‘Ing’ is sometimes a suffix,” Tahnee offers. “But it isn’t here because it doesn’t make sense with what I know about the word.” Then Tahnee moves on to one of the most challenging words in the sentence—“tighter.” “Show me the base,” she says. “Tight,” the kids say. “And ‘er’ is the suffix,” another kid says.

How many words can you form? The word matrix is a visual tool used in SWI

practice to help students understand word structure and meaning while building vocabulary and perfecting spelling skills.

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