MindWing Concepts Blog

SLPs and teachers working in language intervention often turn to wordless picture books as a fun context to develop storytelling skills. Series such as Mercer Mayer’s “A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog...” tell stories through pictures and ask readers to tease out the story, inferring the important details and relying on characters’ facial expressions to glean important clues. Similarly popular are David Wiesner’s Tuesday and Sector 7, which depict narrative through fantastical illustrations, and Alexandra Day’s Carl series, in which a dog goes to great, un-dog-like lengths to care for his charge, a little girl named Madeleine.

I have long been a fan of using such visual narrative materials with students, not only to develop storytelling skills, but also to work on Social Thinking™ concepts and perspective taking. Wordless (or word-minimal) videos also can be a terrific resource, as the characters are animated and require students to interpret body language in more real-life timeframes. The trouble is, videos can sometimes be hard to find and curate for use in therapy, as they tend to exist in helpful 5-minute clips within DVDs, or on YouTube here and there.

For this reason, I was thrilled to recently discover (via a friend’s Facebook post) Simon’s Cat, the YouTube series of short wordless (but meow-ful) videos in which a cat gets into various adventures, usually much to the chagrin of his owner. The naturally food-obsessed and self-centered Cat, across 17 (!) different videos available on the Simon’s Cat Channel, can be followed as he chases insects, interacts with hedgehogs, and often endeavors to be the center of his owner’s attention.

Take, for example, the hysterical “Let Me In,” in which the Cat, um, shatters the problem of a closed patio door. Like many of the videos in the series, the narrative can be analyzed as a complete episode using Mindwing’s Story Grammar Marker icons:

Clinicians will have a choice of a wide range of videos in the Simon’s Cat series in order to construct a character study for students, and the videos can be explored at various narrative levels, from Action Sequence to Complete Episode. Kids are sure to love them; I have received enthusiastic responses (and requests for more) Simon’s Cat after using the videos with both primary and upper elementary students, and I am sure older students would respond positively as well!

If YouTube is blocked in your district, be sure to check out my post about how to download videos at home and use them at school.

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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I always love finding resources that serve as a context for addressing many speech and language-related skills. The wonderful book Edwina- The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She was Extinct by Mo Willems is one of those resources; it can be used to target narrative and expository formulation, as well as social thinking skills in several areas.

To begin with, Edwina is a story that will engage and delight children from early to late elementary ages, beginning with its title and the name of the main character, Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie. Reginald has a problem: everyone around him is enthralled by Edwina, the friendly town dinosaur, and no one heeds his increasingly emphatic pleas to accept that Dinosaurs! Are! Extinct! The structure of the story is perfect for mapping as a complete episode using Braidy or Story Grammar Marker, as can be seen below:

Though this story has the twist of having the main character be both strangely right and wrong at the same time, it also provides a great context for building skills essential for children with autism spectrum disorders and other social pragmatic issues. The key problem in the story is mainly one of perspective, and could be visualized for students using the SGM Universal Magnets, Perspective Taking Maps (with icons down the middle and competing perspectives on either side), or Critical Thinking Triangle as discussed in the Making Connections volume of Mindwing’s Autism Collection to develop perspective taking skills.

Edwina also is a nice teaching tool if you are using Michelle Garcia Winner and Stephanie Madrigal’s terrific Superflex program, which reviews Social Thinking skills in the context of a comic book world. We can all relate to the ongoing battle between Superflex, who helps us use flexible thinking and problem solving skills, and the Team of Unthinkables, characters who try to force the citizens of Social Town to act in certain “Unexpected” ways. One of the leaders of the Unthinkables is Rock Brain, who gets us “stuck” in patterns of rigid thinking and on our own wants and ideas. Although Reginald does exhibit some flexible thinking in the varied ways he approaches his problem, the fact that he views Edwina’s existence as a problem at all is an example of a “Rock Brain Moment,” one you can analyze with students using that program’s “Find the Unthinkable Rock Brain” activity. One illustration in Edwina provides a perfect stopping point and discussion of Rock Brain thinking, as Reginald protests Edwina’s distribution of cookies in the park by carrying a sign that reads “This is NOT happening!!!”

Finally, Edwina can be used to target expository language in several ways. Try researching extinct animals and make a list (BrainPop’s clip on Extinction is a great place to start if you have a subscription or free trial) using Thememaker’s List Map, or perhaps a sequence of how a particular animal died out. As we only see a bit of Reginald’s presentation on “Things that are Extinct,” perhaps your students could continue his project in PowerPoint form! The story also has several embedded lists, such as the ways Edwina helped the townspeople, and cookies play a key role, so why not work on writing and completing the sequence of making actual cookies!

Sean J. Sweeney, M.S., M.Ed., CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist working in the public schools 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, which won the 2010 Best New Edublog Award. He can be contacted at sean@speechtechie.com.

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As stated so well in It’s All About The Story, Book I of Mindwing’s Autism Collection, “Tuning into one’s own Feelings as well as the Feelings of Others is extremely problematic to children with autism. The book provides visual flip charts, discussion prompts and an introduction to the Six Universal Feelings (happy, sad, mad, scared, surprised and disgusted), as well as ways to move beyond those Universal categories to more advanced feelings vocabulary--all of these resources give SLPs a great place to start. Finding that starting point- like all vocabulary instruction- can be difficult, especially with a topic as abstract as emotions. To complement the charts and picture book suggestions in It’s All About The Story, here are some resources to make feelings instruction more interactive, visual and accessible.

One fun way to explore the Six Universal Feelings and how feelings can change as a result of Kick-Offs is through comic strips. You can locate all sorts of comics with simple narrative structure and clear character feelings at Comics.com (try Peanuts for a perennial favorite):

You can also make your own comics with simple strip creators like Make Beliefs Comix (as a project with kids or pre-made to analyze with your students). Here’s a silly one I made to illustrate the emotion mad (make sure to print, email or screenshot your work, so you can use it later):

One way to expand vocabulary from the typical “ HAPPY/SAD/MAD” is to refer your students to MindWing’s Feelings Poster™.
It is available here - CLICK HERE.

Another great way to make connections to the Universal Feelings and develop vocabulary in context (with reference to nonverbal cues) is with the interactive Emotions Color Wheel.

This resource organizes feelings by color and degree of intensity- with less intense emotions located on the outside of the wheel- and provides an image and quote to go with each feeling!

It is therefore a great way to talk about the nonverbal cues that help us “read” each emotion, as well as a “Kick-Off” that could cause us to feel that way.

Children like looking at snapshots and images, and one way to engage them in feelings discussion is to view some arrays of photos related to feelings. Internet-based stock photo sites offer a great variety of emotion-based professional images that you can browse for free with students. You can of course purchase some images for your own use and keeping, but you can also just search and explore with students (as long as you don’t mind seeing a watermark on the photos as you do so- it really doesn’t get in the way of analyzing the photo). Sites such as iStockphoto have the added advantage of providing an interesting activity to explore social inferencing and perspective taking: What (i.e. what context- character, setting, or kick-off) is making each of these people so cheerful?

This array is from a search of iStockPhoto (on the site, you can mouse over images to enlarge); some other resources you can try include Shutterstock and Veer.

Hope these resources make you feel happy!

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