Language and Literacy Solutions

05/27/2026

Likely the biggest SWI myth!

One of the biggest myths surrounding Structured Word Inquiry is tha...

05/27/2026

It's time to clean up some terminology. One is the sound system of the writing system and the other is a pedagogy based on drill.

What each one is, and why the distinction changes instruction

05/22/2026

Put one foot in front of the other 🎶 Be gentle with yourself while learning something new.

We can only practice what we understand, and sometimes the children who struggle most are the ones who force us to keep learning.

05/22/2026

We all learn through play and discovery.

Explore the benefits and challenges of using self-directed play-based learning models in schools. --Before the last few centuries, children around the world ...

05/21/2026

Structured Literacy is often presented as the settled “best” answer for children with dyslexia.

But parents deserve to know the difference between marketing and outcomes.

Structured Literacy is not a new discovery. It is an umbrella label for OG-style programs: explicit phonics, multisensory instruction, sequential lessons, and the same general framework that has been sold under names like Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, Neuhaus, and others.

The question is not whether the marketing sounds convincing. The question is whether the outcomes justify the claims.

And the research on OG does not show what many families have been led to believe. The major meta-analysis did not find statistically significant effects for OG interventions on foundational reading skills, spelling, vocabulary, or comprehension compared with other instruction for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities.

That is a serious problem when families are being told this is the gold standard.

A stronger label does not create stronger outcomes.

That is what this article is about.

Structured literacy sounds like it should solve the problem.

05/20/2026

Word sums and matrices do not magically turn a phonics lesson into Structured Word Inquiry.

If the framework is still sound-first, the tools have moved but the thinking has not. SWI is not a set of activities. It is a different understanding of how English orthography works.

Why adding morphology to phonics-first instruction does not make it SWI

05/16/2026

Beginning readers do not need fragments of language arranged into artificial little tasks.

They need real words, real sentences, real meaning, and adults who understand how the writing system works.

In this post, I’m talking about why early reading instruction should begin with language, not isolated bits pulled away from meaning.

You do not start young children with fake parts.

05/09/2026

When people ask, “Where is the research for SWI?” Bowers and Kirby’s 2010 study needs to be part of the conversation.

This study did not show that children can memorize more word parts. It showed something much more useful: when students studied written word structure, they were able to use what they learned about a base to understand untaught relatives in that word family.

That is generative vocabulary learning.

For children who struggle, this is not a side issue. A child who is memorizing one word at a time is always waiting for the next word to be taught. A child who understands how word families work has a way into unfamiliar words.

That is why morphology cannot be treated as an add-on.

What the 2010 SWI study showed

05/08/2026

People keep saying “follow the research.”

I agree. Let’s follow it carefully.

Research showing that phonology is involved in reading is not the same as research proving that phonics-first instruction is necessary for every beginning reader. Those are different claims.

This post asks a very specific question: Where is the research showing that all children must begin with a phonics-first sequence before meaning, morphology, etymology, syntax, and the broader structure of written words can sit at the center of instruction?

I am not arguing against phonology. I teach phonology. I am arguing against treating phonics as if it owns the beginning of literacy instruction.

For many children, that pathway works well enough. For others, it fails for years. Those are the children I see. And they should not have to keep failing under one sequence before adults are willing to ask whether the sequence was ever as settled as they were told.

Evidence that phonology participates in reading is not evidence that phonics must organize the beginning of instruction.

05/06/2026

I’m reposting this because the field keeps asking for research on Structured Word Inquiry, but when a study directly compares morphology-based instruction built on SWI with a phonology-focused intervention using Wilson, the response is often silence.

The study by Bowen Wang and colleagues, published in Reading Psychology, should not be treated as a side note. It deserves serious discussion, especially from people who continue to claim that beginning or struggling readers must be organized around phonology first.This does not mean one study settles every question. No study does. But it does mean the field has to stop pretending there is no evidence worth considering when the evidence challenges the sequence, assumptions, and intervention models many programs have built their claims around. If we are going to talk about evidence, then we have to be willing to deal with evidence that complicates the story.

People have been dismissing Structured Word Inquiry for years with a confidence the evidence never really earned.

05/01/2026

Agree.