The research is clear: students will not learn how to spell if they are not explicitly taught. However, this doesn’t mean we have to go back to the old ways of teaching spelling, where students are given groups of random, unrelated words, expected to memorize them without context or authentic application. We can “walk and chew gum,” as they say: we can use progressive practices, such as inquiry-based learning, in tandem with tried-and-true research on how students learn to spell, in order to cultivate engaging lessons around English orthography that are also sustainable for teachers.

Building off of the Structured Word Inquiry approach (Bowers & Bowers, 2020), we will explore four key questions for exploring *any* word in the English language:
(1) What does it mean?
(2) How is it built?
(3) What are its relatives?
(4) How is it pronounced?

In this interactive session, teachers will be immersed in several word explorations, understanding how to guide students through these four questions in monosyllabic, phonetically spelled words (i.e., cat, flop, snake); high-frequency words commonly labeled as “sight words” or “red words” (i.e., does, have, pretty); and multi-syllabic words built from morphological constructions (i.e., happy, information, action).

Learning Intention:
We are learning how to sustainably and systematically teach spelling using inquiry, in an effort to increase student engagement and investment, meanwhile growing spelling achievement in order to boost writing fluency.Success Criteria:
– Participants will recall the four questions for exploring spelling patterns through inquiry-based instruction.
– Teachers will identify tools to explore etymology, orthography, and word relatives (including Etymonline, WordSearcher, word matrices, and word sorts).
– Teachers apply tools for exploring spelling to create their own exploration for a commonly misspelled word.