Narrative

This post comes just a little in advance of a timely “holiday!” May the Fourth (Be With You) is a great day to celebrate students’ widespread interest in all things Star Wars. One of my favorite resources over the years has been Jeffrey Brown’s series, which started with Darth Vader and Son. This and other books by Brown require a stretch of the imagination: what if Luke (and other characters) actually grew up with Vader as a father figure?...

I have been serving an adjunct role at Boston University for 5 semesters providing supervision to graduate students in their first clinical experiences in the in-house clinic. One of the routines for the semester is to teach and use processes for obtaining baseline and post-treatment data. It was by equipping students in this manner that I discovered the availability of the CUBED, along with the previously mentioned SLAM Cards. The CUBED is a “family of screening and progress monitoring tools” that includes a huge package of graded story samples (levels K-8) with narrative language listening and reading materials and measures....

We have previously discussed in this blog the importance of the “GIVE A STORY TO GET A STORY” technique. Described by Hadley (1998) in her wonderful article on naturalistic language sampling, and linked to other resources, conversational mapping involves providing a story about your own life which can help elicit the same from your students. This technique provides a great model and also a pragmatic context for narrative intervention, no matter the “size” of your story. Recently, I had a rather big story to share with my students. After many years of trying, I made it through the audition process to compete on Jeopardy!...

In celebration of the New Year, we want to focus on a message of “hope,” so we have chosen a selection of children's literature called The Rabbit Listened, by Cori Doerrfeld, for use with the Story Grammar Marker^® or Braidy the StoryBraid^® in school, for remote learning, or at home! In this Blog post, we will share an analysis of story elements and narrative structure using Story Grammar Marker^® icons, a discussion of the message and metaphoric meaning, as well as activities with FREE downloads (found toward end of post)...

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown Girl Dreaming. NY: Putnam. This is a book of poetry centering on the author’s life experiences growing up in Ohio. She remembers life as a child and applies these memories to her future. There are two poems that I would like to cite: “every wish, one dream,” (pages 313–314) and “it’ll be scary sometimes,” (pages 13–14). The first selection is about Woodson’s dream of becoming a writer. As many writers have, she has read much and remembered the themes, lines of stories and poems, and their life lessons. As I read the passage to you, think about her expression of her life’s goal. The second poem is about a memory from early life stories about family experiences from past generations. Handout Available...

Wade, M & L. (2006). And Then It Happened. Ontario, Canada: Books for Boys. This series of books was given to me when I was in Ontario, Canada, presenting about narrative development. I thought I would present one of these stories today since there is an opportunity to have a little fun with the content of these volumes. The short stories are written for boys (and girls) between grades 3 & 6. The website www.boysbookshelf.com provides a sample short story from each of the volumes as well as listings of all the Canadian school systems visited by Michael Wade, one of the authors. My favorite story is “The Giant Cupcakes.” I have used it as reader’s theater with props. It is lots of fun. There are several Kick-Offs throughout this short story. Handout Available...