MindWing Concepts Blog

Making the world a better place for children. That’s what an Easthampton woman has done through her work in helping children solve problems.

Maryellen Rooney Moreau is a speech and language pathologist. She was a professor at American International College and twenty years ago founded Mindwing Concepts, a business that creates tools to help children communicate better to solve problems and resolve conflict. Maryellen says, “The tools that I’ve created over the past many years, 20 years, that I’ve been a speech and language pathologist for over 35 years, and the focus has always been to help children who maybe have ideas in their head, but can’t get the ideas out. So to foster that in areas of reading and writing, but especially in the area of social communication.”

Maryellen has created a tool called the Story Grammar Marker. Her daughter, Sheila Moreau Pratt, is vice president of marketing and sales for Mindwing Concepts. She says, “It helps children to be able to tell stories, solve problems, think critically, communicate.”

It’s for her work that Maryellen is the recipient of the Boise Peace Quilt Lifetime Achievement Award. The project was started in 1982 by two mothers in Boise, Idaho. They made the first friendship peace quilt and sent it to people in what was then, the Soviet Union. There are 45 quilts now, given to people from all walks of life like Fred Rogers and Senator Frank Church. Gwynne McElhinney, a member of the Boise Peace Quilt Project says, “All of them share this idea that the world can be made a better place if each of us, in our own little patch of garden, our own backyard, think globally and act locally and look for conflict resolution.”

Maryellen received her quilt in Idaho back in October. A reception was held in Springfield Wednesday night to celebrate her milestone. McElhinney says the quilt has squares on it that were images that children drew, strategies to resolve conflict and they’ve been turned into fabric art

Maryellen now travels across North America training parents and teachers in methods to help children improve themselves in school and in life. Her passion to help children is making a difference. Maryellen says, “The reason I think I’ve made a difference is that I’ve given them a way to think through situations and be able to express those thoughts and plans and perspectives, just do everything that the piece quilt is a symbol of.”

MindWing Concepts is located at 1 Federal Street in Springfield at the STCC Technology Park. To learn more, call 866-851-2415 or check out their website, mindwingconcepts.com.

Watch Maryellen's Interview with WGGB

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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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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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Maryellen Rooney Moreau '68 is one alumna who has turned her undergraduate thesis into a lifelong career.

Over 40 years ago, Moreau completed an honors thesis on language development in the department of communication arts and sciences, which is now known as communication disorders.

Her thesis prompted a continued interest in researching the link between oral language development and literacy, turning Moreau into an entrepreneur whose business has changed the way educators teach. In 1994 she began MindWing Concepts, Inc., a company that develops and patents teacher manuals and educational tools for language and literacy, including the patented Story Grammar Marker ©.

MindWing develops research-based products that aid students in building the oral language skills necessary to be competent in retelling stories, reading comprehension, writing, and critical thinking. Located in Springfield, MA, only 25 miles from UMass Amherst, the local business has grown into a worldwide corporation. In classrooms across the globe, over a million children are using MindWing's visual, kinesthetic and tactile tools to assisting them with oral and written expression.

Even decades after graduating with honors, Moreau continues to conduct research, building on her undergraduate thesis. "I have just completed a new manual and game called the Autism Collection to show teachers and parents of children with autism how my tools and methodology relate to that disability," she said.

Typically completed in their senior year, the comprehensive, research-intensive Capstone thesis or project of original scholarship gives Honors students a chance to delve more deeply into an academic subject of their interest. Students build on the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired by pursuing research, creating art, engaging the wider community in action efforts, or by working diligently on one of a variety of other academic projects. The Capstone is designed to provide all Commonwealth Honors College students with the opportunity to integrate their undergraduate experiences and prepare for their careers—professional or academic.

For Honors students like Moreau, the Capstone Experience can not only culminate an academic career but also commence a professional path.

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