I believe that Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) can promote motivation* to read while building foundational literacy skills. SWI allows instructors to partner with students as co-researchers, which empowers readers to become active participants in their learning. More importantly, it can help students to feel curiosity rather than dread about spelling and reading. As a tutor, I incorporate the tools of SWI to help students overcome struggles with decoding, fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension.
I have over five years experience working in private and public schools in Vermont and Kentucky. My graduate education includes a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction through Castleton University and a graduate-level Dyslexia Certificate program through the University of Florida. I am a certified Structured Literacy/Dyslexia Interventionist (SLDI) through the Center for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI). In the state of Kentucky, I am licensed to teach English in grades 5–12 (however, I love tutoring students of all ages; one of my favorite tutoring experiences was with a second grader).
Please contact me for individualized tutoring. Depending upon the needs and age of the student, we might emphasize some of the following approaches:
- learning about the structure and etymology (word history) of high frequency words
- analyzing the morphological structure of vocabulary words in the context of interesting, complex texts
- reading texts aloud with fluency (accuracy and appropriate rate) and prosody (expressiveness)
- utilizing comprehension strategies such as summarization and asking our own questions as readers
- writing about texts using textual evidence and logical reasoning.
*I recently analyzed the word <motivation>. My hypothesized base is <mote>, which comes from the Latin motus meaning “to move” (see the entries on etymonline and latin-dictionary.net). One related word that I want to highlight is <emotion> (e + mote + ion → emotion). There is an elegance to the semantic connection between the emotional state (feeling motivated) and the idea of movement towards a chosen goal.