Spelling & Grammar Week Three

Diving into Structured Word Inquiry (SWI)!

SWI resources for the interested parent / teacher:

Rebecca Loveless

WordWorks Literacy Centre - Pete Bowers

Etymonline - Doug Harper

Word Searcher

Mini Matrix-Maker

Real Spelling - Michel in France

Monday, October 15

• add Purdy School field trip to Local History & Geography MLB
• introduce the nine main parts of speech (noun, adjective, article, verb, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction, interjection) along with their corresponding Montessori Grammar Symbols
• present follow-up Grammar work which accompanies the Everglades Habitat Mat and Coral Reef Habitat Mat
• start each child's Haunted House of Speech, using Grammar Stencils and Haunted House Template

Tuesday, October 16

• explain the basis of SWI and how it uses the scientific method to investigate the English orthographic system (our spelling system does not primarily represent sounds... it primarily represents meaning)
• request that students and their families begin to collect Wonder Words for us to investigate together
• explain the Four Questions and introduce the idea of word sums
• watch the video Why is there a "b" in doubt? by Gina Cooke
• brainstorm words which begin with < tw > and carry a sense of two, meaning that they may also come from the Old English root tweogan
• explain that understanding the relationship between tweogan and
  < two > helps us remember the spelling of that homophone

Thursday, October 18

• examine the pattern of < wh > at the start of question words and
  < th > at the start of answer words, which helps with < were > and < where > confusion; explain that words that share the same job tend to share spelling patterns
• brainstorm a list of these word pairings:

  where - there

  when - then

  who & whom - they, them, thou, thee

  which - these, those

  what - that, this

  whence - thence

• explain the difference between subject and object to answer a question about when to use < who > and when to use < whom >
• do the Word Bag activity with our brainstormed list of < tw > words; explore the Online Etymology Dictionary and discover synchronic etymology (words evolving at the same time and influencing each other); take our exploration deeper to the Proto-Indo-European *dwo and rearrange our Word Bag cards to be organized correctly!

  We discovered that all of the following are Old English words, evolving at the same time and sharing the Proto-Indo-European root *dwo:

  < twelve >
  < twice >
  < twist >
  < twine >
  < tweogan >
  < twin >
  < betwixt >
  < between >

  Only < two >, < twenty >, and < twain > actually then descended from tweogan.

  The unrelated words were < twirl >, < tweed >, and < tweet >.

• add The Four Questions of SWI and the Tree Diagram showing the difference between "base" and "root" to MLB

our final Word Bag arrangment
click photo to enlarge

Friday, October 19

• review that our spelling system does not primarily represent sounds... it primarily represents meaning
• watch the video Making sense of spelling by Gina Cooke
• review The Four Questions of SWI and the Tree Diagram; review terms prefix, suffix, and affix
• analyze first student suggested word < president >, using this as our first opportunity to practice making word sums
• pass out golden folders for SWI and Script; analyze < pineapple > (since our folders are decorated with pineapples) and review that a compound word is made up of two bases
• pass out plain white paper and fountain pens; begin Script lessons with the "u" family (u, a, o)

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