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; once you know the system, the SGM® is LOW PREP - 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 and 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: Create a Halloween (or Other) Story Song
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are becoming more prevalent, powerful, and integrated in our daily lives. While this is on some level SPOOKY, given the tasks they can perform as well as the potential for abuse, they offer amazing opportunities to create with our students if used carefully. The creative power stems from the relatively recent dawn of “Generative” AI, which can compose materials in the form of text, images (previously discussed here and here) or even music, the topic of today’s post...
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Tool Tuesday: ReVISITING Google Earth
With the school year back in full swing, our posts will resume highlighting simple tools, tech or non-tech, that we can use to teach about narrative and expository language in conjunction with MindWing’s methodology. In the past, I have highlighted the now-simpler Google Earth and wanted to revisit this topic in the light of some recent sessions I have had with students. Though Google Earth initially was a complicated downloadable application, it has evolved into a web version accessible by simply navigating to it in your browser (earth.google.com).
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Tool Tuesday: Summer Study Series Part 4—“A Recent Look at Evidence-Based Expository Intervention”
In this 4th and final entry in the Summer Study Series for 2024, we will circle back to the expository side of language. Teresa Ukrainetz has always been one of my go-to experts on a number of aspects of discourse, and literally wrote the book on “Conceptualized Language Intervention.” It was with some excitement that I discovered her recent article, “Evidence-Based Expository Intervention: A Tutorial for Speech-Language Pathologists” (2024).
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Tool Tuesday: Summer Study Series Part 3—Considering Narrative and Neurodiversity
With this 3rd entry in 2024’s Summer Study Series, we look at a recent article that promotes neurodiversity-affirming approaches and how narrative language intervention fits within this recent topic. To offer a simplification, the neurodiversity movement has emerged in recent years as autistic individuals aged toward adulthood. Social media in particular has given autistic culture an amplified voice, and this population has expressed opinions about their educational experiences and what has been helpful, and in some cases, harmful to them...
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