Nemo’s Table for the Structure & Meaning Test: Generative Scientific inquiry of if/how <true> and <truce> are relatedRecently I started tutoring (via video conference) with a mom and her two children, Sigourney and Nemo who live in British Columbia. Between sessions, Nemo hypothesized that the words <truce> and <true> might be related. We had worked with the “structure and meaning test” so he started the process to investigate his own question. At first, Nemo found it confusing to organize his findings. So, being an excellent scientist, he created a chart to help him lay out his thinking to better study it. Nemo’s linguistic analysis is just brilliant. Additionally, the construction of a chart to help organize his findings and explain his thinking is the work of a rigorous, inventive scientist. I asked if I could share it with the wider community of real spellers. Since he was happy to share his work, I created two short videos to help everyone learn from his work. I have published this post on Real Spellers with those videos along with a blank template (in Pages and Word) based on Nemo’s table that you can download and adapt in any way you see fit.

www.wordworkskingston.com 1

Highlights This Issue... Word scientists learning by disproving hypotheses✦ 12-year-old student, Nemo, creates a table for organizing the

evidence he collects in his investigation into whether and how <true> and <truce> are related. Links to videos and downloads of Nemo’s “structure and meaning test findings table”

✦ Grade 5 students test hypotheses of suffixes. ✦ TEDEd video on scientific inquiry process: falsification✦ Recent Real Spellers Posts: Learn from and contribute to our

communities’ learning ✦ Highlights from the Real Spelling Gallery

WordWorks Newsletter #77 The science of structured word inquiry: Rejecting hypotheses that turn out to be false

Upcoming Workshops• Jan. 3-6: Working with high school students at the Nueva School • March 7: Public workshop in San Francisco (Details TBA)• Feb. 7-8: Public SWI Workshop at ISKL in Kuala Lumpur.

- Register here; Click here for more information. - Share a flyer from this link.

• March 15-19: Melbourne (Details TBA)• July 28-30: WW Summer Course on Wolfe Island.

- See this new document with information on registration and more.

A new tool for guiding structure and meaning tests, courtesy of 12-year-old student, Nemo.

Pete with old and new friends from the Lincoln Community School in Accra, Ghana Nov 3-7, 2014!

(R igh t ) Sc reen sho t o f exce l len t TEDEd Video making sense of falsification as central to scientific inquiry.

I also had to share the inspiring email (box at top right) that Nemo’s mom sent when after our work together. Her email offers such a wonderful expression of the experience that can result from attaining the understanding that allows us to reject the false assumption that spelling is a frustrating, irregular system we just have to put up with. The message I sent in response (with some revisions) highlights this point about the centrality falsification:What makes your investigation of <truce> and <true> so rich to share is the use of your chart to remind yourself of how to reject your own hypotheses if they don't stand up to scrutiny.It may not be an exaggeration to say that essentially the entire purpose of Word Works is to help people [including myself!] learn to use scientific principles in order to reject false hypotheses.  Learning how to perceive flaws in our thinking is the central gift of scientific inquiry. Falsification provides the traction necessary to gain control over our understanding of English spelling -- or any other complex, but ordered system. Many thanks to Nemo for sharing his work. Perhaps his ability to organize and present his own understanding will help others do the same. Perhaps just the idea of organizing the evidence we collect from an investigation in a coherent, careful way will inspire still more innovations for organizing our thinking.Hypothesizing and testing about spelling in the classroom: The “Suffix Challenge” continuesSome time ago, I pointed to this post about the “Suffix Challenge” that teacher Dan Allen shared in his blog soon after

my visit to his school in Zurich. Mary Beth Steven’s was inspired and brought the challenge in her own way to her class. I encourage you to just go to this link to read Mary Beth’s post and watch her video of a master class of supporting scientific inquiry in the classroom. Watch how Mary Beth does the following:

• Sets a meaningful challenge for her students -- building a bank of suffixes that then can count on for future investigations.

• Uses that challenge to build an understanding of how to work out if they have evidence confirming a suffix they hypothesize actually works as a suffix.

www.wordworkskingston.com 2

Email from Nemo’s mom after our 5 sessions

It [this work] changes a person on a fundamental level; it is like coming out of a cave and seeing the world. It touches everything. One of the best parts is how fired up we all feel when we see a word. You can grab the word by the tail and take it as far as you like in bits and pieces and on the journey things unfold in multiple ways that you can’t foresee. It is also unifying for a family because we have a shared history of word exploration. Last night, when my husband was reading bedtime story, I heard him begin to ask the kids about a possibly tricky word meaning <miscreant> and even he, on the periphery of our learning, exclaimed, “Wait a minute! You are word scientists! What can you do with this word?” It was awesome because Nemo and Sigourney dug in with gusto and were so excited to discover that the character was wrongly created, but Nemo wisely suggested that we look at etymonline in the morning to be sure (turned out to be from a different Latin base). All day words call to us, to dig deeper, to draw the rewards of digging and sifting and knowledge and connection is the treasure.

• Supports the process of their investigation with observations and further questions -- not with “answers”. These students are learning how to be better scientists

TEDEd video on the scientific process and falsificationLong time real speller and friend Fiona Hamilton Sheridan recently sent me this link to a TEDEd video. It is a spectacular illustration of how scientific thinking is supposed to work.

The video uses a math context to make it clear that -- just as Nemo and Mary Beth’s students do so well -- the key to deepening understanding is by Looking for evidence to counter our hypotheses. Also see this brilliant comic on the difference between seeking questions and seeking answers!

www.wordworkskingston.com 3

Learn with your Community of Spelling ScientistsHere are some rich investigations shared on Real Spellers you may want to explore:<sport> and <port>Click here for an investigation that began with the assumption that there was no real connection between these two words. Spanish speakers might have an advantage in this one.What’s going on with <go>? Understanding the spelling of function and lexical (content) wordsClick here for an investigation trying to understand why this word uses just two letters, when it appears to have so many uses as a lexical word.Why does <cries> have an <-es> suffix? Click here for a study trying to make sense of the conventions for the <-s> and <-es> suffixes that surfaces in a word that also requires understanding of the <y> / <i> conventions. When a <pole> isn’t a <pole> Click here for an investigation of the words <polish>, <polite> and <pole> that makes sense of homographic words vs. homographic elements.The best Trick or Treat Costume this Halloween!And for fun and inspiration, click here for a Trick or Treat costume that is also a brilliant treatise on English spelling!(See the <treat> matrix on Damon’s back at the Real Spellers post!)

Real Spelling Gallery in the SpotlightThe Real Spelling Gallery at the Real Spelling homepage is an incredibly rich, free reference for our community of spelling scientists.

I’m highlighting two videos I reviewed recently in response to a teacher’s blog post that looked at the “connecting vowel letter” and included a video on a student investigation of the

word <geography>.

Find the film “Orthographic Geometry” in the “Word Studies Album” here.

Find the film “Connecting Vowel Letters” in the Morphology Album” here.