MindWing Concepts Blog

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!

Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink |

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.

Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink |