The Story Grammar Marker® Approach
For Language Development, Inference Generation, and Discourse-Level Comprehension and Expression
Join thousands of educators, parents, and other professionals in implementing the Story Grammar Marker® Approach with our virtual courses, onsite workshops, coaching, and hands-on instructional materials!
Learn why Maryellen Rooney Moreau, M.Ed. CCC-SLP developed the Story Grammar Marker® Approach to language & literacy!
Improve Language, Literacy, Higher Order Language & Cognitive Skills
- Oral Language Development
- Language Comprehension
- Awareness of Text Structure
- Reading Comprehension
- Sentences, Questions & Cohesive Ties
- Vocabulary and Background Knowledge
- Critical Thinking
- Inference Generation
- Narrative & Informational Writing
- Verbal Reasoning
- Social Emotional Learning
- Theory of Mind
- Perspective-Taking
- Situation Model & Mental Models
Develop Foundational Language & Cognitive Skills and Social, Emotional, & Mental Well-Being
- Co- and Self-Regulation
- Fostering Resilience
- Working Memory
- Empathy Building
- Sequencing Routines
- Problem Solving
- Emotional Intelligence
- Organizing Thoughts
- Mediating Meltdowns
- Facilitating Conversations
- Resolving Conflicts
- Executive Functioning
- Mediating Sibling Rivalry
- Goal-Setting
- Thinking and Talking About Feelings, Plans, Thoughts, Outcomes
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach improves the language and literacy skills of children by empowering Educators, Parents, Specialists, SLPs, Psychologists to…
Foster High Student Engagement with our easy-to-use icon-based system and hands-on, intuitive tools.
Encourage Interdisciplinary Collaboration among students, classroom teachers, SLPs, specialists, parents, reading teachers, literacy coaches, content area teachers, psychologists and more!
Cultivate a Common Language in the Classroom, the Therapy Room, the Playground – and HOME!
Facilitate Classroom Management via organizing expectations, sequencing routines, solving problems and resolving interpersonal conflicts, and assisting with self-regulation.
Save Time: the SGM® is LOW PREP — once you know the system, you can grab the tools and maps in the moment, in any situation, during any lesson!
Make quality instructional decisions based upon scientific research, models and frameworks, and delivering explicit, systematic, and differentiated instruction.
Nurture a Growth Mindset and a “CAN DO!” attitude. Discover students’ Superpowers!
Promote Equity and Inclusivity by providing support for ALL LEARNERS regardless of age, ability or background, and giving every student a VOICE! Give them a tool that will help them to TELL THEIR STORY.
Discourse is a Missing Link In Literacy Instruction! The Story Grammar Marker® Approach is rooted in the DISCOURSE Level of Language Development.
Click below to learn more about the building blocks of language and literacy.
In 1991, based on years of research and experience, Maryellen Rooney Moreau, M.Ed., CCC-SLP, pioneered the idea of designing meaningful symbols “icons” to represent the components of story grammar that make up the episode of a story.
She created a powerful tool that children can hold in their hands to tell a story. When it worked so well for one 3rd grader, it was field-tested by speech pathologists & reading specialists in a private school on a college campus. Word of its success with a neurodivergent population brought the Story Grammar Marker® Approach to the attention of public school programs, and has become widely used in general education classrooms as well! It is now in use in 36 countries across the globe.
In 2014, Maryellen was recognized for her professional work as creator of the Story Grammar Marker® Approach and related methodology and the founder of MindWing Concepts, Inc., when she became the 2014 recipient of the Alice H. Garside Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Dyslexia Association, Massachusetts Branch.
People learn best from others, so we thought you’d like to hear from others who have used and support the SGM® Approach to teach reading comprehension and critical thinking.
“Scientists have long known that human beings are storytelling creatures. For centuries, we have told stories to transmit information, share histories, and teach important lessons. While stories often have a profound effect on us due to emotional content, recent research also shows that our brains are actually hard-wired to seek out a coherent narrative structure in the stories we hear and tell. This structure helps us absorb the information in a story, and connect it with our own experiences in the world.” Scientific Learning. (2012, June 14). Using Stories to Teach: How Narrative Structure Helps Students Learn [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://34.211.105.222/blog/using-stories-teach-how-narrative-structure-helps-students-learn
12 Lessons to Begin Using the Story Grammar Marker®
Tool Tuesday: Google’s Arts and Culture Games
If Google’s Arts and Culture website can be taken as a model, it seems like artificial intelligence (AI) is rejuvenating the interactive website. For some years there was a wealth of interactive websites that allowed for making choices and creating stories, but these seem to have faded with the retirement of technologies like Flash, and also by the redirection of priorities through the pandemic years. Check out Google’s growing library of games for some hope for this form of instructional technology. Sparky is a great one to start with. In this activity, you create inventions by combining everyday objects. Begin by choosing a purpose for the invention—food, music or travel—then allow your students to use their imaginations and collaborate…
Introducing the Language Comprehension Institute Just in Time for National Speech-Language-Hearing Month!
In recognition of National Speech-Language-Hearing Month this May, we’re thrilled to announce the founding of the Language Comprehension Institute (LCI) — a pioneering initiative dedicated to transforming language comprehension instruction in schools. As speech-language pathologists, reading specialists, and educators, we know that language comprehension is the foundation of all learning, thinking, and communication. Join us in celebrating this milestone, and let’s work together to bring language comprehension to the center of classroom literacy instruction!
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Tool Tuesday: Create Stories in Slides
I have often thought that although assessment materials—including SLAM (School Aged Language Assessment) cards offered by the Leaders Project—offer great baseline or progress monitoring tools, it would be great to have something similar for treatment. I have been continually impressed by the materials the graduate students I work with at Boston University create with Slides Go, so I wanted to tell you about this great resource! Slides Go is designed to provide Google Slides or PowerPoint templates, generally to adults making presentations. Sounds boring, right? HOWEVER, the templates include adorable cartoon-like sets that are very appealing to young students...
Tool Tuesday: Transcribe with AI
This past ASHA Convention in Seattle, my friends and colleagues Meghan Graham and Caroline Brinkert from Boston University discussed the importance of language sampling in supporting student growth, specifically in preschool. They also described barriers to language sample analysis, including time investment and clinicians’ uncertainty and lack of confidence in their skills for this kind of assessment. Truly, the time factor was always a big deal. Recording, playing, and rewinding cassette tape recordings, as we typed out a sample, gave way to doing the same with digital recordings on our phones and iPads, saving little time. AI transcription utilizes Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology, which is based on language and learning models that interpret human speech and convert a recording into text.