MindWing Concepts Blog

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a recent trend in educational design, and involves presenting students with real-world contextual tasks that relate to curriculum areas. PBL is a great approach for Speech-Language Pathologists and Special Educators to employ as our students benefit from having their learning relate to personally relevant and functional content. To learn more about PBL, watch this great video from Common Craft. One tool that has been integrated as a kind of PBL is the “Webquest,” a set of web pages that outline a task and provide web-based resources for its completion. Webquests are not new, and teachers have been developing them for some time. There is a particular Webquest that I wanted to share with you in this post, particularly because it is one you could use in classroom, small group, or even individual language therapy while integrating Story Grammar Marker® and Thememaker® tools in the process.

The webquest I speak of is called the Tantalizing Adjectives Webquest, originally designed by Ann Ryan. The task presented is as follows:

You and your partner are very excited about having the opportunity to create a menu for your themed restaurant. Since this is a new experience for both of you, there are certain tasks that you will need to accomplish.

They include:

• Review the definition and types of adjectives
• Analyze and evaluate online menus
• Decide on the theme for your restaurant
• Choose the types of food you would like to serve
• Write descriptions using adjectives
• Use an online dictionary and/or thesaurus to improve word clarity
• Create a menu

Kids love food and going out to restaurants, and will be instantly excited when you present this task to them! The Webquest provides necessary links and resources on its “Process” page, but you can always feel free to supplement these as you’d like (a few suggestions to follow).

So, where does the SGM® come in? First of all, I use it to outline the scope of the project, and each session we recap our progress and what is left to do using the SGM®. This provides the students with multiple exposures to the icons and the “story” of our project.

Additionally, when you arrive at the stage of the project that provides models of themed restaurants, you can use the SGM®/Thememaker® Descriptive setting map in multiple activities. First of all, it provides a framework for breaking down the idea of “theme” so that students have a strong descriptive model of a realized theme. After reviewing the examples provided, students can complete a Descriptive Setting map for one of the restaurants.

In this part of the activity, I supplemented the Webquest by displaying two resources. First of all, there is a wonderful video describing T-Rex, a restaurant in Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida. This provides an example of a fully realized theme, and can be used with a Descriptive Setting map to model the process. Another fun extension activity is to look at the website for S’MAC in NYC. This macaroni-and-cheese themed restaurant provides yet more examples of strong menu descriptions, and you can introduce the concept of “teaser” and “clincher” statements within the descriptions here, e.g. “Be swept away by the Mediterranean Sea...” for Mediterranean Mac and Cheese. However, for decor, S’MAC is not really a realized theme, so you can have kids brainstorm what would improve it, yet again using a Descriptive Setting map. Mine came up with: cheese-shaped furniture and lighting, macaroni-shaped table legs, waitstaff dressed in yellow and orange, and a macaroni fountain!

After exploring themes with your students, you can have them work with their group to brainstorm themes and select a theme. The Thememaker List Map comes in handy here:

Later, students work to describe what their restaurant will look like, and begin to think about menu items, using a Setting Description Map:

I have done this project a number of times in the past, and making a traditional poster for the menu works quite well. However, this year I am thinking of using Glogster with the students to make the final project. I will plan to update you in a later post, hope this project was interesting to you. You can find a resource of other Webquests here.

Sean J. Sweeney, MS, MEd, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist working in the public school and in private practice at The Ely Center in Newton, Massachusetts. He has presented on the topic of technology integration in speech and language at the ASHA convention and is the author of the blog SpeechTechie: Looking at Technology Through a Language Lens and one of the editors of TherapyApp411.

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At the elementary school level, we all can attest to seeing students who, narratively, get stuck at what we might call the “andthenandthenandthen” stage. The official name for this stage is the Action Sequence, and it is comprised of Characters, Settings, and a series of Actions with little variation in conjunction use. These students benefit from structures and contexts to move them into using to more complex story elements and cohesive ties such as when, because, and so. Mindwing’s narrative maps, particularly the Reactive Sequence and Abbreviated Episode Maps can provide that structure: (*Maps can be found in the Story Grammar Marker® Teachers’ Manual and the Talk to Write, Write to Learn™ Teachers’ Manual )

While these maps provide a structure, instructionally we also need a context. Comics are one way to provide that! Kids love comics, and narratively they tend to be shorter and work according to these structures. You can of course easily draw 4-panel comics, but there are a couple of great technology resources that you can employ to scaffold students to the next narrative level.

First up, MakeBeliefsComix (yes, I spelled that right) is a great simple web app you can use to make comics. This Flash-based (therefore, non-functional on iPad) website allows you to drag and drop characters, backgrounds, props and word/thought balloons into a scene. I recently used this site in a classroom to develop narrative as well as the social thinking™ skill of “defeating GlassMan ® moments.” From Think Social Publishing, this concept relates to using self-talk and other strategies to regulate our responses to small problems across the day. Kids in the class received instruction on narrative structure and thinking strategies, and were asked to make a comic showing a character experiencing (or defeating) a GlassMan moment, basically a Reactive Sequence or Abbreviated Episode:

The super-simple MakeBeliefsComix site allows you to “Select emotions, objects, scenes, balloons and panel prompts to tell the story.” The resulting cartoon can be saved by emailing it to an established email account:

One students’ creation depicts Abraham Lincoln dealing with the kickoff of losing his bird companion by using self-talk!

This lesson could also be accomplished using the new iPad app Big Nate: Comix by U! HD ($4.99, separate version for iPod is priced at $3.99), based on the popular book series. Like many iPad apps, this one opens with a great tutorial and works similarly to MakeBeliefComix, allowing you to tap and drag all the necessary elements of a fun story!

Sean J. Sweeney, MS, MEd, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist working in the public school and in private practice at The Ely Center in Newton, Massachusetts. He has presented on the topic of technology integration in speech and language at the ASHA convention and is the author of the blog SpeechTechie: Looking at Technology Through a Language Lens and one of the editors of TherapyApp411.

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