MindWing Concepts Blog

In some recent posts I have described some visual and interactive activities to complement the instruction in It’s All About the Story establishing the concepts of character and setting. In keeping with the sequence of lessons in Mindwing’s Autism Collection, I’d like to move on to a few ways technology can help you introduce the Initiating Event or “Kick-Off “ of a narrative. As the lessons describe, you can discuss how in a particular setting, something happens to characters to “change the ‘Ho-Hum’ day” and start the story! An additional language strategy is to teach the words and phrases that signal a Kick-Off: suddenly, just then, etc. Taking a step beyond the visuals in the lessons, you can teach your students to apply the concept of the Kick-off using a few fun interactive technology resources.

First of all, I’d like to mention Kerpoof again, as it is one of my favorite teacher-friendly resources. Kerpoof is absolutely perfect for introducing the Kick-Off in a multisensory manner that will let kids use their creativity. Check out my handout and grab your teacher account on Kerpoof, then use the Make a Picture activity to choose a setting:

Kids can then use the sidebar and captions features to click, drag, and illustrate characters and a Kick-Off that might occur in that setting:

For a different take on Kick-Offs (geared toward a younger audience), try Sesame Workshop’s adorable Pinky Dinky Doo site, which integrates audio podcasts (you can listen to right on the site), visual activity sheets, and an interactive story creator to present fun, engaging, yet simple stories you can discuss in your sessions. You can use Pinky Dinky Doo’s podcasts to ask kids to identify Kick-Offs (and focus on auditory comprehension) as suggested in It’s All About the Story, and you can also create your own:

This site would also be wonderful to share with parents to continue your work at home!

An additional resource for instruction regarding Initiating Events is one that would be more appropriate for upper elementary or older students: Five Card Flickr. This “game” site pulls from approved photos on the photo sharing website Flickr in order to create an interactive digital storytelling experience. You can modify it by only selecting with students a setting, character(s) and Kick-Off to emphasize the interaction between the three elements and the Kick-off signal words:

In this case, perhaps, a dog was running on a tropical seashore when??? Draw 3 of 5 will tell!!!

Enjoy exploring Kick-Offs with your students!

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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Using Kerpoof for Digital Storytelling and Narrative Development Part 2

Over the years I have come to believe that Story Grammar Marker has taught me as much about narrative development as it has taught my students about telling stories!  Initially, I used to use the full SGM and teach Complete Episodes, regardless of my students' level of development.  Although they gained a good sense of the icons and could identify story elements, the ties between elements were missing--what to do about my third graders who still peppered their stories with "and then" after "and then?"  Using the Day in the Park booklet with students really helped me understand my students' narrative levels and the cohesive ties that mark each stage. From there, my use of the SGM became much more thoughtful, differentiated and holistic-- addressing sentence structure as well as overall story structure.

Back to those 3rd graders- although we had done "Day in the Park" in Grade 2, they definitely needed a review, specifically one that would boost them from an Action Sequence to a more complex story that included more mature cohesive ties: a Reaction Sequence.  Their teacher welcomed me into the classroom for a group project in which kids were asked to create exactly this kind of story.  After a review of the SGM icons (character, setting, kickoff, and reaction), the cohesive ties (I called these "glue words" in the classroom), and plenty of modeling, the kids set to work in groups with Reaction Sequence story maps and Kerpoof as a visual inspiration.  The story maps provided structure and a kind of checklist to make sure that kids had met the requirements, and in the meantime they had great fun being creative!  I found my students left the project with a greater understanding of how complex sentences made their stories better, and could generalize the skills into other tasks.  The booklet embedded below provides you with a review of the Kerpoof interface as well as 4 examples of student work, complete with my notations of the story elements and cohesive ties each group used.  You can click through to the Issuu site if you would like to download and/or print the booklet.

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