For the Love of Literacy
An excellent podcast for those who want to know more about Structured Word Inquiry
Hosted by Bruce Howlett and David Ray, For the Love of Literacy is a podcast with a very strong focus on Structured Word Inquiry (SWI), an approach to teaching spelling and reading that emphasises word meaning, morphology (word structure) and etymology (word origins).
Whether you are new to SWI, or are already using this approach, this podcast is likely to provide useful insights. The guests are knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and most are educators or speech-language pathologists who have used SWI in their own practice. The tone is very friendly, with the emphasis on learning as you go, and being unafraid to discuss and investigate spellings that you do not fully understand.
Recommended episodes:
I enjoyed so many of these episodes that it’s hard to choose favourites! Nevertheless, I’ve chosen these three that represent a range of facets and applications of SWI.
Building a Strong Foundation for Structured Literacy Teaching
Sue Hegland and Liisa Freure are guests on this episode, and they are incredibly down-to-earth and practical. Sue Hegland’s book Beneath the Surface of Words (reviewed here) is excellent, and she is just as clear at communicating in person as in writing. Liisa Freure is also an experienced trainer, helping teachers to understand the structure of English.
Both guests came to SWI through family experiences of dyslexia, and their stories highlight their determination to find a teaching approach that really works. This episode is a great introduction to why morphology and etymology are crucial to understanding and teaching English spelling. They offer practical examples, such as how to teach the suffix <-s> and the high-frequency words says and said. The discussion of how different accents can cause difficulties for a phonics-based approach is particularly interesting – for example, how should you deal with phonemes that have merged in some accents but not in others?
Language Enriching Literacy Ideas for DLD
The two guests on this episode, Kathleen Love and Beth Coppoc Gunshor, are speech-language pathologists. They discuss the high rates of co-occurrence of dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), and the implications for educators. This episode aims to build awareness of the difficulties that children with DLD may have, and provide information about how to support them.
People with DLD usually struggle with complex syntax (sentence structure), and this is closely linked to morphology. Kathleen and Beth describe how using an SWI approach helps people with DLD by making meaningful connections between words, and drawing attention to the role of suffixes in producing accurate sentences. In addition, they discuss supportive techniques such as recasting sentences, paraphrasing, expanding sentences, and much more.
Spelling-Meaning Connections for Memory and Comprehension
This episode features Dr Pete Bowers, creator of the Structured Word Inquiry approach. Pete describes the fundamental ideas behind SWI, giving examples of how it makes clear the links between spelling and meaning, and between phonology and morphology.
Dr Kimberly Murphy is a literacy researcher and speech pathologist. In this episode, as well as describing her success using SWI in her practice, Kimberly discusses her fascinating research into the connections between reading comprehension and spelling, and her research studies investigating whether SWI is an effective instructional approach.
Related resources
For more information on SWI, take a look the huge range of resources on Dr Pete Bowers’ website.
If you enjoy this podcast, you may also be interested in the Literacy Intervention for Teens and Tweens (LIfTT). LIfTT uses morphology and etymology to help students understand English spelling, and the morphological matrices and word sums that are discussed in these podcasts are important tools within the intervention.