MindWing Concepts Blog

The holiday season creates a lot of excitement for our students, no matter what holiday they celebrate! This mood can lead to a lot of language and, of course, the opportunity to develop narrative using Story Grammar Marker®. In this post, I’ll be mentioning a couple of resources you can use to acknowledge the season (in varying degrees of sectarianism) while reinforcing use of narrative elements and SGM® icons.

The first is a brief Pixar-like animated short I stumbled across in my blog-surfing routines; I am so glad I found it! As I described in a previous post, wordless videos can be an engaging way to have students “fill in” the language that is not used in the video, while also identifying emotions signaled by nonverbal cues. Check out Impossible Present, a great complete episode narrative to map, especially with elementary aged students who can handle the “unexpected behaviors” (Social Thinking®) and the brief flash of kid-buttocks! It’s all good when a laser is involved, right?

Impossible Present from Royale on Vimeo.

This story can be mapped as follows or using an earlier developmental level of narrative (e.g. a simple action sequence or reaction sequence):

The video also presents a great opportunity to talk about expected reactions (modeling the icons used in a narrative reaction sequence) to receiving or, in this case, finding a gift, and perhaps place them on an Incredible 5-Point scale:

5- Extremely Negative Reaction (saying something rude about the gift)
4- Mildly Negative Reaction (e.g. “I already have one of these,” making “a face”)
3- Neutral Reaction (saying nothing)
2- Positive Reaction (smiling, saying “Thanks! I can use this to...)
1- Enthusiastic Reaction (“WOW!”)

For other holiday fun, check out the iPad/iPhone/iPod app ClickySticky Christmas Sticker Book ($1.99), which allows you to create all sorts of picture scenes with students, including the following:

• a decorated living room (think SGM® or Braidy® Setting map...)
• outdoor winter activity scenes with simple animations (SGM® or Braidy® Action Sequence map, anyone?)
• a customized snowman, Santa, or elves (what Characters to describe using SGM® or Braidy® Character Maps!)

Tap and Drag to assemble characters, then tap the Play button for subtle animations that will prompt action words...

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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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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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Over on my blog SpeechTechie this month, I am discussing in a series of posts the incredibly useful technique of using QR codes in language interventions. QR codes, which look like this....

...were born in the world of marketing (you may have seen them on ads about town) but are making their way into educational settings as an attention-grabbing tool. QR codes can be created very easily and printed, then scanned with free apps available for your smartphone or iPad. When scanned, the app will show text that you entered or a link to a website, depending on how you created the code. The result is an engaging process of discovery in which the student, instead of being presented a simple block of text, or shown a picture or website, participates in a little “peekaboo” moment in which the stimulus item is presented after scanning the code. Very cool.

QR codes lend themselves to be used in scavenger hunts in which a child locates the codes you have hidden around the classroom, therapy center, or wherever. They also lend themselves to story mapping, as a story can be broken down into text elements and printed as QR codes, one for character/setting, one for kickoff, and so on.

Given the season, I thought it would be fun to provide you with a Halloween lesson you can use right away that incorporates QR codes. You will first want to install a free app (click here for links to apps and a demo) on your smartphone or iPad that you can use to scan codes and display results. Presented below is a favorite ghost story of mine, “The Bus Stop,” modified from Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (a great resource for more short scares). Click on each of the links below and you will navigate to a webpage with a QR code image. Print it from your web browser (File>Print) and be sure to make a notation on the back of the print-out so you don’t lose track of what is what. Save them in an envelope for use next year too! When scanned, each of the codes will display the text linked below. This would be a great lesson to accompany the Story Grammar Marker complete episode map, and perhaps inspire students to create their own ghost stories using SGM to help them organize their narratives. Here goes!

	One night, a man named Ed was driving home from work in a rainstorm.
	When he passed by the bus stop, there was a woman waiting for the bus. She was soaking wet and had no umbrella so Ed offered her a ride home. She told him her name was Joanna and they talked while he drove her home.
	Ed thought Joanna was very nice and he enjoyed talking with her.
	He wanted to get to know her better so he asked if she’d like to have dinner sometime, and she said yes.
	Ed and Joanna went out to dinner and had a great time.
	They went out many times over the next several weeks, having fun at the movies and walks in the park. Each time he picked her up at the bus stop and dropped her at her house at the end of the night.
	One night, Joanna was not at the bus stop when Ed went to pick her up.
	Ed went to her house and rang the bell. A woman answered, and Ed told her he was looking for Joanna.
	The woman said she was Joanna’s mother, and invited him inside. On the hallway table, Ed saw a picture of Joanna, and asked when it was taken.
	Joanna’s mom said, “Right before she died, 18 years ago. She was hit by a car and killed while waiting for a bus at the bus stop.”
	Oooooh, so all that time he had been dating a ghost! Probably, that’s not so bad, given what I hear about dating these days. This story is always great for seeing that light of realization on kids’ faces at the conclusion (or helping them to make the connection)!

If you’d like to think about how to break down other stories and make your own QR codes, check out my post and video demo on SpeechTechie. It is MUCH easier than you think!

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 presents and consults on the topic of technology integration in speech and language 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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Recently in the Mindwing Blog I featured the Story Patch iPad app, which allows students to create stories according to provided structures or from scratch, resulting in a text and picture-based booklet.

I wanted to follow up that post with a different digital storytelling app that provides an easy means to create and publish dynamic animated stories with spoken audio and music! The app I speak of is Toontastic (an absolute BARGAIN at $1.99), whose creators at Launchpad toys have sought to bridge the gap created when students who primarily express themseves through play are suddenly expected to write stories (i.e. that gap we call “First Grade”). Toontastic uses the iPad’s multitouch interface and a play-like context beautifully as students are guided to create as many scenes as are needed to tell their story. The app would be a great tool to use in order to teach narrative elements and organization using Braidy the StoryBraid™, Story Grammar Marker™, or the Mindwing Autism Collection and their associated manipulatives and story maps.

Here’s a visual tour of Toontastic for you:

Toontastic comes with an audio explanation of story structure that can be easily aligned with Story Grammar Marker®, as can be seen above. You can choose to create five different scenes in your animated movie, or just stick with one!

Choose a setting, then Character “Toys” to put into action! You can also draw your own settings and characters.

Character Toys themselves can be custom colored, then tapped and dragged around the screen.  Tap Start Animation and the app will record as you move the characters and speak to provide an audio narration and/or dialogue. The app will then play back your animated scene!

For each scene, you can pick a music soundtrack that corresponds with the mood of the situation, connecting actions with internal responses of the characters.

When you are done with as many scenes as you’d like to create, tap Done and you can give your movie a title and genre, and share on ToonTube, Toontastic’s online community, if you’d like.  The story is automatically also saved within the app.

Students will be excited to publish to ToonTube, where others can interact with their film by “liking” it.  ToonTube also features model animations that would be a great context for story mapping of others’ creations using the SGM and other tools!

I recently had the opportunity to chat via Skype with Andy Russell, one of the creators of Toontastic.  If you have a few minutes, it’s an interesting conversation about the background of the app, its creators’ sound belief in social interactionist (Vygotskian) language learning, and future plans for the app and Launchpad Toys.

I hope you’ll check out Toontastic- it’s a great app to add to your narrative toolbox!

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 blogSpeechTechie: LookingatTechnologyThroughaLanguageLens and one of the editors of TherapyApp411.

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Join us for this live event on Tuesday, September 13, at 4:00 PM (EST)!

Register now for our FREE webinar, "Narrative Development: Beyond Story Grammar," presented by Maryellen Rooney Moreau, MEd, CCC-SLP, of MindWing Concepts, Inc.

Abstract: When we think about "narratives," we often only think about naming the parts of the story, sequencing actions and whether that story has a beginning, middle and end. Narrative development goes beyond the basic story. Instruction and intervention in narrative development can improve your students' skills in oral and written communication. Narrative development can help students with perspective-taking, problem solving, answering "why" questions, and comprehending and communicating the emotions, motivations and plans of characters in stories and in life's social interactions. It provides a way to teach the often elusive concepts of main idea, plot, cohesion, temporal and causal connections, and summarization. This type of instruction and intervention can help speech-language pathologists give every child - regardless of age, ability or culture - the skills to think, communicate and learn effectively in order to achieve academic and social success.

The following quote was in an article in the most recent publication of The ASHA Leader. It truly exemplifies and supports the methodology that Maryellen will be speaking about in Tuesday’s Webinar: “Oral narratives are a natural bridge between oral and literate language. Narrative skills and the language skills needed to produce quality narratives are interspersed throughout the Common Core Standards. One effective RTI approach for SLPs is to provide intervention focusing on narratives. The SLP provides Tier 1 supports in the classroom through modeled lessons with the whole class. In Tier 2/3, the SLP provides small group intensive intervention that simultaneously targets the story grammar and deficient language skills. Using oral narratives in an intervention model builds a foundation for the development of listening, speaking reading and writing.” – How to Fit Response to Intervention into a Heavy Workload, The ASHA LEADER, August 30, 2011 Vol. 16, No. 10.

About the Presenter: Maryellen Rooney Moreau, MEd, CCC-SLP, founder and president of MindWing Concepts, Inc., in Springfield, MA, is a speech-language pathologist and a nationally recognized presenter in the area of oral language development - specifically story grammar, narrative development and expository text. She received her bachelor's degree in Communication Disorders from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her master's of education degree in Communication Disorders from Pennsylvania State University. Maryellen's 40-year professional career includes time spent as a school-based speech-language pathologist in the Hartford Public Schools; assistant professor at American International College; diagnostician at the Curtis Blake Child Development Center; and coordinator of Intervention Curriculum and Professional Development at the Curtis Blake Day School for children with language learning disabilities, all in Springfield, MA. She created the Story Grammar Marker® and Braidy the StoryBraid® after years of research and practice, and was awarded two United States Patents. Her methodology, which encompasses narrative development and expository text, helps children across the globe to think, communicate and learn!

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Over the summer I had the kind of “Kickoff” that we all hope to avoid in the course of our ho-hum days. It was a 95-degree school day and I was leaving one setting to go to my private practice and run a social skill group. As I opened my passenger side door to put my bag in the car, an oppressive blast of heat enveloped me. I decided stupidly that it would be a good idea to lean over and start the car so the A/C could have, you know, a millisecond to cool down the car as I walked around toward the driver side. Of course when I got there the door had locked automatically, as it had on the other side. Ugh.

As I stewed in the heat waiting for the auto club to help me out, I thought about the group I had to run shortly (with a dwindling amount of time to actually get there), and how using Story Grammar Marker® and sharing this story could possibly help them when I arrived. I find that when we open up to kids a bit and share real-life stories, their engagement level often increases as they realize that we are actually real people who make silly mistakes and have Kickoffs just like they do. Having received a preview of Mindwing’s upcoming new book, Facilitating Relationships, I also realized that my story could use what is called a Social Problem Solving Prompt, a key intervention outlined in the new book (and supported by the National Autism Center in its recommendation for story-based interventions). In this new book there are 18 different Social Problem Solving Prompts for social situations to help your students to recognize, think about and talk about a social situation including, characters, settings, kick-offs, feelings, conflicts, plans, perspectives and consequences.

When I got to our therapy center 10 minutes late, my graduate student had skillfully and promptly started group (see below for how this occurred), and they were sharing their own weekly news over snack. It seemed a good time to share my news, and I had grabbed a Student Story Grammar Marker as I passed a treatment room. “So, I have a story for you...” I started, and relayed the setting and Kickoff. A good teaching point immediately ensued when one of the boys shouted out “HA HA!” I cued him that while my positive body language while relaying the story could give him a clue that it was OK to smile and laugh a bit WITH me, what he had just done was more in the realm of teasing and made me think an annoyed thought! From there, my story really became a Problem Solving Prompt and an interactive discussion as I asked the boys a lot of questions while using the SGM for visual support:

How do you think I felt? Hot, annoyed, worried, angry were some suggestions.

Which Unthinkable can you guess almost got in my brain? Glass Man, who makes us overreact to problems and SHATTER! (See Michelle Garcia Winner and Stephanie Madrigal’s Superflex™ Curriculum)
Can you guess what my plan was? (This one took some scaffolding to elicit that my plan was to get into my car and get to group on time, or get the message to the center that someone needed to start group for me).

We then talked through what my problem solving steps were. Here’s a preview of what that could look like using one of the Prompts from Facilitating Relationships:

In effect, something as simple as my silly keys story could provide a quick teachable moment that touched on a lot of goals for this particular group: narrative organization, social inference, self-regulation, self-talk, problem solving and interpersonal skills, among others.

Additionally, we all got to talk about what my “Note To Self” should be (see Sara Ward’s excellent work on this concept) after this experience: Don’t start the car unless you are seated in the driver’s seat!

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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After a TORNADO, an EARTHQUAKE and now a looming HURRICANE, we at MindWing have become preoccupied by the weather. Usually snowstorms are our biggest threat! The past couple of months of weather have been surreal. We have had workshops cancelled and have spoken to colleagues and friends throughout the east coast who have had school called off due to the hurricane warning.

The paragraph below about Hurricane Irene was found yesterday on http://thesiweather.com/ and exemplifies the IMPORTANCE OF COMPREHENDING EXPOSITORY TEXT IN A “REAL LIFE” SITUATION. Below the paragraph are ThemeMaker® maps organizing the complex, extensive information from this weather report. We thought this could be used for a “content area” lesson.

HURRICANE IRENE

Despite the threat for severe thunderstorms later today and early tonight, the main story is the approach of dangerous Hurricane Irene. Irene continues to be a major threat to the Mid-Atlantic region for this weekend with numerous power outages and flooding problems likely. Irene appears to be headed on a collision course for the New York City metropolitan region and will likely create hurricane conditions Saturday night and Sunday to include torrential rains and destructive winds. Irene is headed for the Outer Banks region of North Carolina by late Saturday as a major hurricane (ie category 3 or higher). It should then move along the east coast to a position near New York City by Sunday night – likely as a category 1 hurricane. By early Monday, Irene will likely be moving towards western Massachusetts as a tropical storm. This storm has several ominous features that make it a very dangerous storm for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast; especially, along the coast from North Carolina to Maine. First, it is a powerful hurricane - possibly reaching category 4 before making landfall on Saturday. Second, it is a larger-than-normal hurricane which means it will contain heavy rain and strong winds over a very large area. Third, and perhaps most important for New York and New England, it appears that this system will only slowly weaken as it rides up the east coast thanks in part to warm sea surface temperatures up the coast. All of this suggests an extreme weather event is in the offing near and along the coast from North Carolina to Maine and torrential rain and devastating winds will occur inland as well back to near the I-95 corridor. All of the major cities from DC to Boston will be impacted severely by Irene this weekend with the brunt of the storm here Saturday night and Sunday including possible wind gusts to 90 mph. Stay tuned for updates on this serious weather event for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

See ThemeMaker® Maps below….

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Story Grammar and the Classroom Curriculum: The Five Senses

Over the years I have developed a special interest in collecting and using picture books that are tangential to the classroom curriculum.  It’s wonderful to find books that contain touches of our content areas but aren’t “in your face” about it!  These books can engage students in a story (and thus help them develop narrative language) while also providing a context to access abstract curriculum areas.

Although many schools cover this topic at different times of year, Spring is a great time for a science unit on the five senses.  For younger students, this is a basic overview on how we experience the world though hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch.  For older students, these simpler concepts can serve as an entry point to the more difficult intricacies of how the sensory system works.  Additionally, May is Better Hearing and Speech Month in the USA and May Month in Canada, so what better time to talk about the sense of hearing, and maybe sync with some lessons about hearing and speech?

One of my tricks has always been to use Amazon.com’s book search tool to locate stories related to a topic.  Although the search tool will of course return straightforward titles describing the topic, once in a while you also find those books that loosely theme to the topic.  Here are three of my favorite books that tell stories involving the Five Senses, all of which would be great opportunities to use Braidy, the Story Braid or Story Grammar Marker to guide students through and retell the stories. In fact, within MindWing’s Autism Kit, the book It’s All About the Story contains a map or chart for thinking, talking and writing about “settings” in terms of the Five Senses. There is even a Five Senses Song, sung to the Tune of “This Land is Your Land,” a familiar song by Woody Guthrie! I have included these two pages from the manual for your download. You can get the whole manual (or Autism Kit) at MindWing’s Online Store:

Click images to Enlarge

The simplest of these is Rain by Manya Stojic, featuring animals on an African Savannah as they experience the coming rain through their senses.  The book has wonderful pictures and simple text forming an action sequence.  Because the theme involves cycling though the rainy and dry seasons, Braidy and SGM can help you form a visual for the students; just hold the Tie-Up to the Kick-Off to form a circle!  In addition to the animals’ experience, the book touches on the cycle of plant growth, another key science curriculum topic and a nice opportunity for a picture sequencing task.

Another thematic action sequence can be found in the book Night Train by Caroline Stutson and Katherine Tillotson, the tale of a young child’s experience on a train ride to the city. Narratively, it lacks a real plan and attempts (but as such, is great for using Braidy and SGM to move kids from isolated details to a real sequence of events), and focuses on the sensations inherent in the train ride: hearing the engineer call “all aboard,” seeing cows in the field, etc. The book can also be used to target other items in the transportation category and brainstorm the different sensations one would experience while riding a car, boat, plane...(thus getting into the expository element of Listing).

Finally, a real crowd-pleaser can be found in Judith Hyde Guilliland’s Not in the House, Newton!, about a boy who finds a magic crayon that brings all his drawings to sense-pleasing (but mom-annoying) life!  This one can be framed a bit more within the Critical Thinking Triangle, with Newton finding the magic red crayon (Kick-Off) and feeling excited, so planning to draw things he’d like to see come to life. Again, by extension the book can be used to List things that are red (or other colors) and imagine what would happen if they came to life from our drawings!  Both Night Train and Newton are great for creating sense charts with students. 

Hope you enjoy these great Five Senses-themed and Braidy-friendly books and activities!

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 Speech Techie: 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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ThemeMaker, Mindwing’s expository companion to Story Grammar Marker, helps children break down and produce the more challenging expository text that becomes central to learning as they advance through the grades! I have found that children are more open to working with expository text once they learn that the familiar SGM icons can help them along the way! While each ThemeMaker Expository Text Map (e.g. List, Sequence, Description, Compare-Contrast) is helpful on its own, kids need to be moved toward understanding that ALL of these structures are contained in curriculum discourse and text!

That can seem like an overwhelming task, but it becomes manageable and fun using a recently developed and FREE online tool, GlogsterEDU, a site that tells all students to “poster yourself!” What is a poster, really, but a display of information that utilizes these key expository structures? Using GlogsterEDU, you can choose and research any topic with your students using ThemeMaker maps and icons, then create a “Glog” with pictures, images and graphics, text (structures!) links, and even recorded audio and video if you wish! How to do all this? Well shoot on over to SpeechTechie, where we are wrapping up Glogster Week, a week of posts featuring examples of how to use Glogs in Speech-Language and other interventions, as well as how-to screencasts showing each step of how to use this (again, FREE) resource. If you’re catching up later, you can just click over to see all the posts regarding Glogster.

How do the ThemeMaker icons work with text structures? Well as I mentioned, they can be used to explore any topic, so I thought I’d present you an array of structures that explore GlogsterEDU itself!

And for a specific example, please check out this Glog I created with a student. D. was studying continents, so we used ThemeMaker Maps to research and break down information about Earth’s land masses, then had a blast creating this Glog (be sure to roll over the Glog to find our links)!

I hope you will consider GlogsterEDU a fun and helpful context to use Mindwing’s tools!

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.

Click Here to View Expository Text Structures and Glogster

Click Here to View Glogster

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I am going to open this post with a language sample obtained from a fifth grade student in 2006, an attempt to retell an episode of the series Full House.

And um something that happened was when this girl named Michelle and this guy Jesse, it was Michelle’s birthday. And Jesse and Michelle got stuck in a gas station and she missed her party.
And um they were there all day, but then finally it opened the next- no it opened a lot later. So um they went back to the house and they had their party and she got an elephant and she got to ride it and all her friends and she got, she felt better. And that’s it.

I collected and analyzed many samples like this over my years in the school setting, narratives that clearly attended to character, setting and “Kick-Off,” but lack cohesion, complexity and maturity due to their reliance on a simple action sequence structure. Do you have a lot of students like this?

I really began to understand how to help students with this type of narrative (who comprised a good chunk of my caseload, and still) when I first worked through Mindwing’s A Day in the Park Student Activity Booklet (and its accompanying lesson plans in the Talk to Write, Write to Learn manual). Many students sort of get stuck at the action sequence level, and don’t generalize the structures needed for a reaction sequence (character, setting, Kick-Off and reaction to the kickoff) or more advanced episodes that detail character responses, feelings and plans, along with complex sentences that link these story elements. A Day in the Park helped me see how I could break down these levels of formulation for students, and as a result I was able to identify other activities that could provide additional practice and skill-building.

One of my favorite recent discoveries is the Zimmer Twins website (based on the Qubo animated series), which allows you to make animated stories from pre-created starters or from scratch! The starters are naturally complex in structure and work really well with Mindwing’s Story Maps as you help students complete the story on a higher level of narrative organization. I found the site to be a great context to focus on moving students from an action to a reaction sequence; here’s one reaction sequence movie I created with a group. Before you get nervous, I can tell you that the Zimmer Twins site is really simple to use!

First, you can view the story starters and pick one that will work for your students.

After clicking “Make Movie From [your chosen title],” you can simply click, drag and modify the rest of your story.

By clicking on the elements in the sentence, you can change character, setting, and other features of the clip. Word and thought balloons can be modified- just click and type. The tabs allow you to add different elements such as actions, reactions and feelings!

Click here to see another way I finished the starter “Surprise!” I hope you enjoy Zimmer Twins, I know the kids I work with really did. Here’s a great tutorial on using the site if you’d like more information before diving in. Be sure to create a free account when you start using the site.

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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