I have worked since 2012 with the Orton-Gillingham Approach, a structured, explicit and multisensory phonics approach. ‘Phonics’ literally means ‘sound’ and it is essential for beginner readers to link sounds to letters.

English is not a phonetic language, however, and having phonics as your only tool for understanding our writing system is limiting. When I came across the Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) approach, it clarified many unusual spellings for me.

For example, why do we spell ‘two’ the way we do? What is the ‘w’ doing there? It turns out it marks an important relationship to twin, twice, twelve and twenty. The ‘g’ in ‘sign’ is needed for the word ‘signal’. Most students find it fun and engaging to study words and their spellings in the larger context of related words.

Another example is the word ‘action’. Students who struggle with spelling often spell it as a-c-s-h-u-n. Learning to understand the structure of the word as the base act + the suffix -ion clarifies its spelling. Teaching my students to identify the underlying structures improves their spelling and confidence.

A word’s spelling is a result of its history, structure and pronunciation; knowing this is so productive to understanding many of the non-phonetic spellings of words we use all the time.

I’ve studied SWI with Pete Bowers, Gina Cooke, Rebecca Loveless and Fiona Hamilton. Check out their websites on the Resources Page.