Learning Opportunities

Pre-Session 

Participants will be provided the previously recorded sessions from the 2022 program year where Peter Bowers draws on topics in two model lessons with junior high students and models how to use lessons from the book to support vocabulary learning.  

Please view these recordings prior to attending the live learning opportunity.

Session 1

This session targets deepening understanding of “word families” for vocabulary instruction. We will study the difference between morphological families (words that share a base in the same matrix) and etymological families (words that share a historical root). Bowers will help teachers learn how to read etymological references like Etymonline in order to identify related words and how etymological relatives link to morphological relatives. This session is particularly valuable for teachers seeking ways to introduce children to the increasingly demanding vocabulary in any subject area. Participants will learn ways to do short little investigations into etymology to support vocabulary learning without having to do major investigations with matrices and word sums every time a word comes up for study. At the same time, teachers will learn how to do deeper morphological investigations when and if they choose

Session 2 

This session will be driven by the interests of participants who have been working with SWI including having studied in one or both of the previous sessions. Ideally teachers will have begun to work with students  using the ideas from the previous sessions and will come to this session prepared with  questions and topics they are most interested in addressing