Please feel free to contact me regarding availability and enrollment. I prefer to start new sections on Mondays but I can begin on the date of your choice! Once payment for the first week is received via PayPal, I will send a link to your child's Canva slide deck by email. The slide deck will contain video links and work space needed for their first lesson. All work and video links for subsequent weeks will be added to the same Canva slide deck.  

dallandandrea@gmail.com 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about SWI or how I can support your learner! dallandandrea@gmail.com    

 Parent review: Excellent class! Unlike most asynchronous classes, this one is individualized to your learner. My son started this class as a struggling speller and improved a lot not only with his spelling but with his vocabulary skills as well. The SWI method, Ms. Dalland’s videos, and weekly homework made it really click for him. This class was more challenging than other spelling classes my son has taken on Outschool. He appreciated that aspect but just wanted to give a heads up that this class might require some adult assistance with the homework, especially at the beginning.  

  In this class, I will provide asynchronous tutoring and support for learners in the Structured Word Inquiry approach to spelling. Each week, I will provide one brief (usually between 12-25 minutes max) video lesson tailored to your learner’s needs and/or questions about spelling. I’ll also assign them some related homework to practice a concept and will provide feedback on their work. All work and video links will be posted to a Canva slide deck that I will share with them. You will not need your own Canva account in order to access the class content. Content will build from week to week to help develop concepts and skills, and again will be tailored to your learner’s needs and particular questions or words they are struggling with. Your learner can communicate in turn via completing the work on Canva, by sending audio and/or video files, by email, or by sending pictures of their work, or any combination of the above!

   This option is ideal for learners whom I may not be able to accommodate due to time zone differences, scheduling conflicts, or for families looking for a lower-cost option than receiving live 1:1 tuition and support in spelling. 

 You are welcome to enroll on a week-by-week basis at the rate of $25 per week, but I would recommend planning to commit to at least 4 weeks to get an idea of how SWI can work for your learner, and you can continue to enroll one week at a time for as long as you like!

   Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about how asynchronous tutoring might work, about Structured Word Inquiry, or to request a new section to begin on a date that works for you, or if you would be interested in an option to “meet” more than once a week. 

   Examples of topics I might provide lessons on would be: suffixing rules for silent < e >, doubling a final consonant, or changing < y > to < i >; learning reasons for having a silent < e > at the end of a base (there are many more reasons than just to change the sound of the vowel!); closer looks at particular digraphs or letters; how to build words from a word family using a matrix; content words vs. function words; when to add < s > or < es > to make a plural, and much more!

 Structured Word Inquiry is literacy instruction which operates on the premise that the English spelling system is highly ordered and logical. So much so, in fact, that it can be approached scientifically through hypothesis, experimentation and conclusion. Rather than relying only on the sounds in words to aid in spelling (phonology), SWI teaches spelling as it really functions; an intersection of phonology along with etymology (the history of a word) and morphology (the building of words from parts; prefixes, bases and suffixes.) In working with your learner, I will deepen their understanding of the order of the English spelling system by helping to replace the misconception that words can be spelled by “sounding them out.” Any speaker of English knows this approach on its own does not work given how many silent letters there are in English words, thousands of homophones (words that are spelled differently although they sound the same, etc.) If your child has been trying and failing for years to master spelling and decoding of words, the SWI approach may be just the thing that can finally help them to make sense of the English language. 

    To give an example of how this would work, if we think about the word , many learners who are taught to spell by “sounding out” would probably spell this word more like . However, when we break the word apart and realize that the base is  with the  suffix on it, it helps us to arrive at the correct spelling and to keep the  in the word  even though it's making a different sound than it did in the base word . The spelling is explained by the morphemes, and not by the sounds. This is just one example of how this approach can help to explain why words are spelled the way they are, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense when we try "sounding them out."

  Learning the SWI approach will aid not only with spelling skills, but with critical reading and vocabulary skills as well, as understanding the connections between words can help learners determine word origins and meaning.

   I’m often asked if I teach Orton-Gillingham or other phonics-based programs. Structured Word Inquiry is not a curriculum or a program; there are no materials you can purchase or step-by-step lessons to follow. Rather, it is an approach, and as it grew from the field of linguistics rather than education, it’s very different than other methods of teaching spelling. While this is not a phonics-based method of instruction, and I would not work on phonics skills directly with your learner, I do believe that having a strong base in phonics is crucial for all readers and spellers. Ideally, your learner would have a good foundation in understanding the sounds that letters make and may have worked through some phonics-based programs in the past. SWI is a great way to take their learning even further, as SWI offers explanations for spellings which phonics cannot explain, such as words with silent letters, or for words which are often presented as “exceptions” or “rule-breakers” by phonics-based programs. In this way, SWI removes the need for learners to memorize rules which only work a small portion of the time and lists of words which break certain spelling “rules.” 

  Structured Word Inquiry is an excellent strategy for learners with dyslexia as it removes the need to guess at a spelling, memorize lists of rules or rely on visual memory. Students study words in in the context of their word families; those words with whom they share a common base and therefore connections in spelling and meaning. Rather than being taught "tips and tricks" that overload working memory, students are taught to analyze words and that spelling is a system of logic and order.