MindWing Concepts Blog

Children’s book author and Illustrator, Bernard Waber created many books for children including the Lyle the Crocodile series and Ira Sleeps Over. Another book, You Look Ridiculous Said the Rhinoceros to the Hippopotamus, is an old favorite that lends itself very well to introducing/reinforcing the SGM^®/Braidy^® List Map.

In this story, the hippopotamus is told by a series of other jungle animals that she looks ridiculous. Each animal then tells the hippopotamus that she needs features that he/she possess (examples include the leopard telling the hippo she needs spots and the giraffe telling the hippo she needs a long neck)...

Hi Everyone! I’m sorry this post is a couple of days late – “Mondays with Maryellen” is on Wednesday this week ☺. We just returned from a whirlwind series of workshops in both San Antonio, Texas and Billings, Montana. We had great audiences, fabulous times with colleagues, and of course the San Antonio RiverWalk, the Alamo and the Big Sky Sunsets were marvelous to visit. Sheila’s 20-month-old daughter Casey and our friend Mary accompanied us on this trip — we’ve included some photos!

San Antonio was 95 degrees – wow! Billings was comfortable in the 70s. However, when we returned to Massachusetts, it was to a 19-degree morning! Alas, Fall, the prelude to snow in New England!

The trip to Billings and the return to the 19-degree morning prompt me to relate a new invitation we’ve received: A visit to Alaska upon the invitation of AKSHA—Alaska Speech Language and Hearing Association 2016 Convention next October...

The Saggy Baggy Elephant, written by K. and V. Jackson, was first published in 1947 as part of many tales in the Little Golden Book series. I was recently reminded of this story when my neighbor’s grandson brought it to me to share. First published in 1942, Little Golden Books were created as an affordable choice of books that appealed to children. The books originally sold for 25 cents (www.randomhousekids.com/
goldenbooks) each. These books are still readily available to children, and, as of 2002, over 2 billion Little Golden Books were in print.

The following is The Saggy Baggy Elephant outlined as a basic complete episode...

The “Core” of The Core manual contains many hands-on materials for student use. One of my favorites is the Expository “My Research” Cut–and-Fold Booklet. I have used this in many settings and grade levels, including centers and with intervention groups. Instructions are included in the manual.

Sea Turtles by Gail Gibbons is one book that works very well with this activity since it includes all expository text structures. As an added resource, Maryellen recently did a section of a webinar on the topic of sea turtles that you might be interested in viewing. (Click here to view Sea Turtles expository analysis excerpt.)...

This week I want to mention our upcoming professional development trips to San Antonio to Billings to New York City to Denver! The stops on our itinerary show the varied text structures, academic language and social communication applications of our language learning tools.

I am speaking at the Dr. Elizabeth Carrow-Woolfolk Lecture Series on Saturday, October 10, at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. It is an honor to be invited to speak at this event since I have long admired Dr. Carrow-Woolfolk’s contributions as a pioneer in the study of language and reading disabilities. My presentation will center on narrative and expository discourse language development using Story Grammar Marker^® and ThemeMaker^® ...