The thinking behind the Lokahi WORD Project

Structured Word Inquiry (SWI)

Structured Word Inquiry invites learners to investigate written language through evidence. It can focus on an individual word and extend across phrases, clauses, sentences, prosody, and connected text. We use questions about meaning, structure, relationships, and grapheme function to make written language more coherent and more generative.

At Lokahi Connect, we use these four question areas flexibly and recursively at the word level and across larger language structures. Entry point and movement depend on the word or larger construction under investigation, its context, learner observation, and purpose of inquiry. Peter N. Bowers is the intellectual source of SWI and the Four Questions. Bowers and Kirby (2010) introduced the term Structured Word Inquiry in a Grade 4/5 morphological vocabulary intervention.

INT-informed design

Integrative Neurodevelopmental Theory, or INT, is Lokahi Connect’s internal design framework for literacy instruction that honors cognitive variability. It draws together insights from neuroscience, developmental psychology, linguistics, and mediated learning to reduce unnecessary load while preserving conceptual rigor.

Mediated learning in practice

Mediated Learning Experience, associated with Reuven Feuerstein, describes how a mediator shapes attention, meaning, reciprocity, and transfer. In our work, mediated learning is the interactional layer through which SWI and INT-informed design are delivered.

Key focus areas: