MindWing Concepts Blog
Announcing the Story Grammar Marker (SGM®) iPad App!
At MindWing Concepts, we are very excited to be celebrating the release of the official Story Grammar Marker app! Our goal in developing this app was to create a digital version of the SGM manipulative in order to take advantage of the iPad’s multifunction capabilities: students can touch the icons, add text, draw or import pictures, and record oral language in the process of story mapping. The app will complement MindWing’s tools for existing users of our methodology and also welcomes those who are just discovering our visual, tactile and kinesthetic approach to narrative language!...
Coming Late Spring: the Story Grammar Marker® App: You are A Star Reporter!
It has been a long time coming, but MindWing Concepts has partnered with three talented Speech Language Pathologists: Meghan Graham, Karen Head and Jill Perry of All4MyChild www.all4mychild.com) to create the Story Grammar Marker® App! All4MyChild is the creator of The Bag Game©, the Social Adventures© App, Talking Train© and Fun Timer©. They have used Story Grammar Marker® extensively for years. As regular readers of our Blog know, Sean Sweeney (www.speechtechie.com) has written many, many Blog entries where he teaches how to incorporate Story Grammar Marker®, ThemeMaker® and our other products with various Apps and web-based technologies. His expertise, enthusiasm and ingenuity has always been an inspiration to MindWing, helping us to see how this platform is a "must" for SGM®. It will be exciting to now see the use of Story Grammar Marker® in its own App format. Thanks to the creativity and technical knowledge of all4mychild.com, the SGM® App has become a reality.
Exploring Action Sequences with Apps and the Common Core Standards
The narrative skill of describing and sequencing actions that can occur within a particular place is so relevant to the classroom curriculum, most recently redefined with the arrival of the Common Core State Standards. The classroom itself is a place where children learn, play, read, write, draw, listen, laugh, and sometimes argue, not necessarily in that order! Nearly every academic topic could be framed as an action sequence, while many children requiring narrative language intervention can get stuck at the previous level of naming, the descriptive sequence. We can help scaffold them to the next level using Story Grammar Marker® and strategies from MindWing’s recent book, The “Core” of the Core: Using Story Grammar Marker® and Other MindWing Concepts Tools To Support Students in Meeting Grade-Level Common Core State Standards...
A Gift to a Character!
‘Tis the season! No matter what one’s religious beliefs are, the holiday season involves giving, and this is a context that is ripe for critical thinking, description, perspective-taking, and social scripts. It can be quite difficult to engineer learning situations in which children are giving each other actual gifts, what with the need for stores, money, and the fine-motor aspects of wrapping. However, technology can cut through some of that sticky tape for us and provide us with a virtual-gift-giving activity!
I first learned of the Gift Wrap App (FREE for iPad)...
Put the Story on Stage with Puppet Pals!
There are a great many easy-to-use apps for iPad that fall into the category of digital storytelling. This may sound like a daunting concept, but digital storytelling is just using technological tools such as digital pictures, video, audio, animation, or drawing in order to convey a story or information. Apps that combine these tools use the intuitive interface of the iPad to bring together different kinds of content in an engaging process of creation — all with your fingertips. Even better, these apps provide a great context to utilize Mindwing Tools such as Braidy, the StoryBraid, Story Grammar Marker, ThemeMaker and their accompanying story or expository planning maps...
Another Successful ASHA Convention in Atlanta!
Well, another ASHA Convention has come and gone and we are on our way into the holiday season! We enjoyed ASHA ATLANTA!
We enjoyed seeing so many friends and colleagues and met so many new SLPs! We want to thank our team at the booth for all of their help in answering questions and explaining Story Grammar Marker® to SLPs visiting the booth.
Judy K. Montgomery visited the booth and met with Maryellen Rooney Moreau about their NEW BOOK coming in 2013 that is for University and College professors and their graduate students. More information about this new book is coming soon!...