Peter Bowers contributed the following post. Pete is a doctoral candidate at Queen's University, Canada, with expertise in orthography and morphology, as well as critical thinking. Visit his website: WordWorks Literacy Centre.
I’m delighted to accept Susan’s invitation to post an entry on her vocabulary blog. My goal is to illustrate the (perhaps surprising) view that studying spelling offers students one of the richest contexts for vocabulary learning and the development of metalinguistic awareness. Along the way I will point to examples of student work, a free lesson for teachers to try, and videos of this instruction coming alive in the classroom.
In my 9th year as a classroom teacher I had little interest in spelling instruction. I was teaching Grade 4 and wanted to engage my students with ideas, not help them memorize facts. Regardless of the subject, I did my best to design my instruction to support curiosity and independent problem-solving skills to foster generative learning skills and attitudes. Why would spelling hold any interest for me? I could hardly think of less fertile ground for developing curiosity and generative learning. Then, in my 10th year, I started working with Real Spelling resources and was introduced to the fact that, contrary to what I had always been told, English spelling is an extremely well organized system.
Investigating how the spelling system really works through an approach I have come to call “structured word inquiry” turned my assumptions on their head. We started to use word sums and the word matrix to disassemble and reassemble words into their constituent elements of meaning (bases and affixes) like pieces of Lego. Learning to use these tools turned us into a team of “word detectives”. We constantly noticed potentially meaningful cues in words, and we got better at investigating how those cues worked. Our investigations revealed surprising and fascinating connections between words. Students regularly encountered new words they wanted to investigate because they might hold answers to hypotheses they developed. Consider the following examples of structured word inquiries sparked by student hypotheses. (Click links for more detail.)
In my 9th year as a classroom teacher I had little interest in spelling instruction. I was teaching Grade 4 and wanted to engage my students with ideas, not help them memorize facts. Regardless of the subject, I did my best to design my instruction to support curiosity and independent problem-solving skills to foster generative learning skills and attitudes. Why would spelling hold any interest for me? I could hardly think of less fertile ground for developing curiosity and generative learning. Then, in my 10th year, I started working with Real Spelling resources and was introduced to the fact that, contrary to what I had always been told, English spelling is an extremely well organized system.
Investigating how the spelling system really works through an approach I have come to call “structured word inquiry” turned my assumptions on their head. We started to use word sums and the word matrix to disassemble and reassemble words into their constituent elements of meaning (bases and affixes) like pieces of Lego. Learning to use these tools turned us into a team of “word detectives”. We constantly noticed potentially meaningful cues in words, and we got better at investigating how those cues worked. Our investigations revealed surprising and fascinating connections between words. Students regularly encountered new words they wanted to investigate because they might hold answers to hypotheses they developed. Consider the following examples of structured word inquiries sparked by student hypotheses. (Click links for more detail.)
- Our hypothesized word sum for condensation (con + dense/ + ate/ + ion) suggests dense is the base. If that's right, the dictionary should show these words share a root and underlying meaning.
- While investigating whether there is a link between secret and secretary, our Word Stems Dictionary pointed to the word discern and a twin base cret/cern for ‘separate, distinguish’. I need to work out how all these words are connected in structure and meaning. If the word sum is se + cret + ary + y → secretary, I need to prove a prefix se-.
- It seems like wise and wisdom must be connected, but the dropped e is confusing. Don’t forget about etymology! Hey, etymonline says both wise and wisdom share the same O.E. (Old English) root ‘wis’ with wizard. Cool.
Spelling became the richest context I could find for instruction which drew on and refined critical thinking skills. I worked hard in science to create the circumstances in which students independently identified and tested hypotheses. This kind of student directed investigation happened naturally all the time when we started to study spelling structure. When I introduced a new term like photosynthesis in science, the students’ reflexive response was to suggest we build a word sum to make sense of its meaning. When students are offered a tool for learning that works for them, they choose to use it. The experience of discovering how words work and how to investigate them revolutionized the learning in my classroom like nothing I had previously experienced.
Several videos are posted on YouTube. The clip above shows the teaching of structured word inquiry, from WordWorks Literacy Centre. Notice the video clip titled Ruptured Investigation, where students are refining their understanding of word structure and problem-solving skills by testing a hypothesis about ruptured, a word they encountered while investigating a set of 48 words built on the bound base rupt (‘break’), collected from the Word Searcher, including disruptive, interrupt, corruption, bankrupt, eruption, rupture, etc. (For more background on the context for this short clip, see Pete's second comment below. The discussion with Susan helped me illustrate the explicit vocabulary instruction that preceded this short clip of an hour long class.)
Several videos are posted on YouTube. The clip above shows the teaching of structured word inquiry, from WordWorks Literacy Centre. Notice the video clip titled Ruptured Investigation, where students are refining their understanding of word structure and problem-solving skills by testing a hypothesis about ruptured, a word they encountered while investigating a set of 48 words built on the bound base rupt (‘break’), collected from the Word Searcher, including disruptive, interrupt, corruption, bankrupt, eruption, rupture, etc. (For more background on the context for this short clip, see Pete's second comment below. The discussion with Susan helped me illustrate the explicit vocabulary instruction that preceded this short clip of an hour long class.)
(Click images to enlarge.) The whiteboard image shows the word matrix we developed as a group from the list of words with the base rupt.
The next image shows a student from that same class working through the morphological structure of each of the 48 words, and building her own matrix.
Download a free lesson here that teachers can use to investigate the structure of imagine First grade? Yes! The video below shows Melvyn Ramsden introducing first graders to the word matrix and word sums that began with working on the spelling of the word helpful
Explore more videos of this type of instruction here and lots of free resources and classroom examples here.
Happy Spelling!