Story in a Can!

Many of my poor language disordered students have such difficulty telling stories.  I'm sure that's no surprise to you.  Narrative skills are not usually the strong suit of someone with language learning problems.  They often lack structure, vocabulary, and understanding of overall language.  Needless to say, we work a lot with stories and books in our speech room.

My newest product targets just that - narratives.  It's a fun way to get kids excited about telling stories.  In fact, my little ones actually ask for the story cans!  (I love it when they don't realize they're learning something while playing).

Disclaimer: This post contains amazon-affiliate links.

Now, this product involves a little bit of craftiness on your part to set everything up.  Don't worry, it's nothing complicated.  You can make it as cutesy or as easy as you'd like.

You'll need about 6 small cans or containers, modge podge or glue, and scrapbook paper.

You can just print the labels and affix them onto any small container if you don't have time to mess with making it cutesy.  OR you can decorate the cans with scrapbook paper, stickers, or even have the students help you!  I used scrapbook paper and printed the labels onto full sheet sticker/label paper.  This made it easy to attach.  

This download also contains sheets to make your own story chips to place inside the cans.  I print these on full sheet label paper as well, so that I don't have to bother with sticky glue. 

Just cut out the circles (or use a 1.5" punch) and attach to poker chips.  I used these:

They turned out super cute.  :)  I put the different types of pictures onto different color chips to make it easier to separate.

There are pictures that target characters, setting, kick-off/problem, feelings, attempts/events, and extras/open-ended.  

It also includes story maps, graphic organizers, and illustrating/writing worksheets to use with the cans and chips.  

We use Braidy the StoryBraid in our speech room.  I LOVE Story Grammar Marker.  Find out more about it here.  Some of the worksheets and maps contain SGM terminology as options, since that's what we use.  There are blank versions as well for those of you who don't.  

There are lots of ways you could use these story cans.  I'd encourage you to get creative and find what works best for your kids!  There are several ideas for use in the download as well.

What do you think??  Could your kids use this in your speech rooms?  

Sticky Words Freebie

You know that feeling when you are giving the CELF to a student and you get to the formulating sentences subtest?  It's a mixture of dread and curiosity for me.  That subtest is not my favorite because sometimes scoring can be subjective, plus it takes forever.  But I'm always curious at how my student will perform.  It gives a great picture of how well he/she grasps language and its complexity.  Part of the reason, I'm thinking, is the word choices.  Targeting transition words and conjunctions forces them to have to think about how words and phrases link or stick together to create a certain flow and meaning.

So I'm trying to incorporate a little of these skills into my daily therapy.  We call them sticky words.  They help link or glue our different thoughts together.  I want my students to be able to speak and write cohesively.  I'm hoping that utilizing these will be a step in that direction.  This is why I made a sticky words board.

When we are creating sentences, retelling stories, writing, reading, etc., we talk about these words on the board and use them!  I love it when my kids find one while we are reading.  I have them pull it off the board and we talk about it and create sentences with it.

To make them I printed the words on bright orange paper and laminated.  Then I cut squares of magnet from this tape and affixed it to the back of the word.

Want some sticky words of your own?  Download them HERE!!

I've been going a little magnet crazy, lol.  I did the same thing with testing and classroom vocabulary.  I added visuals to give them something concrete to see, since these can be very difficult words.  We made it into a game, where different words are worth different amounts of skittles/m&ms/stickers.  We try to talk about them and define them.

Unfortunately, I can't share those with you because I don't have the rights to a lot of the images.  I just wanted to give you an idea of something you can do in your speech rooms!

Therapy Fun Find: Simon's Cat

I'm one of those people who hates digging for things.  I'd rather go into a small boutique and glance around instead of digging through the clearance racks at TJMAX (though I do make myself do it to get good deals from time to time).  I'll admit that I get mildly annoyed when I have to google something and scour through website after website when I can't find what I'm looking for.  It's less of an impatience issue and more of a I-have-a-million-other-things-to-do-right-now issue. Or maybe that's the same thing.  Lol.

So, I always get a little flutter of excitement when I stumble across something cool accidentally.  I feel like I won the gift of time AND cool new idea.  Such is the case with this new fun find.

I came across a super cute series on youtube called Simon's Cat.  Maybe you've heard of it before, since it seems to have been around a while (like a few years!).  It was new to me, so I thought I'd share just in case you wanted to check it out.

The videos are short 2-3 minute episodes of stories from the perspective of Simon the cat.  Two things I love about them: they are short and WORDLESS...perfect for facilitating language and narrative discourse.  I use the Story Grammar Marker tools with them, since most of the videos make a "complete episode" for narratives in SGM language.  

They are also great for working on social language skills, such as emotions, facial expressions, problem solving, unexpected behaviors, and more.  The possibilities with wordless books and videos really are endless.

There are like over 30 videos, so head on over and use away in therapy.  Be sure and subscribe to the youtube channel, so you can stay updated when they post new episodes.