Teaching with Word Inquiry – Classes for Teachers

During the course we will explore the following advanced SWI concepts and skills, and ways to use them for teaching students:

• complex etymonline searches 
• etymological families 
• orthographic denotation
• orthographic markers
  • etymological markers
  • phonological markers
  • lexical markers

The first week will be an exploration of different approaches to lesson planning, and writing lesson plans for, word inquiry lessons. This will include a discussion of how to connect your word inquiries to the major concepts in English Orthography.

Each following week, all class members will write a lesson on the same topic. Class members will work together to brainstorm ideas and share teaching methods, building a safe and collaborative environment.

Each session will focus on a different topic in English orthography, such as: one of the suffixing conventions, function & content words, etymological families, etc

Guest teachers will present different approaches to teaching Word Inquiry and teaching these key concepts.

Class members will not be required to present their lesson plans if they are not comfortable doing so, however, they should be prepared to share their experience writing the lesson as well as their reflections on their colleagues’ work.

The goal of this workshop is for each participant to develop a list of key words that can be used to teach some of the essential concepts in English orthography.

The participants will work both in small groups, and as a whole, to explore how these larger concepts can be found in different words and word families.

They will explore how to use these words – their structure, their meaning, their families, and their stories – to help students discover and explore some of the essential concepts in English spelling.

This workshop will be highly collaborative and participatory.

You will be introduced to methods for playing educational and fun games, both online and in-person.

You will be introduced to a variety game formats and learn how to create your own games in:

• google slides
• flippity
• wordwall

There will be plenty of opportunities for hands-on practice creating games.

You will also be introduced to commercial games that can be integrated into Word Inquiry lessons.

An emphasis will be placed on how to integrate games into Word Inquiry lessons to make review & repetition more engaging.