Narrative

Snowy evenings often inspire poets, musicians and writers. One that I love is Robert Frost’s famous poem entitled Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I have a beautiful copy of this poem with illustrations by Susan Jeffers. This poem happens to be an exemplar poem listed in Appendix 2 of the Common Core State Standards. The last page of the book has a note written by the illustrator about her mother, an artist, who would take her daughter for walks on snowy evenings: “My mother’s favorite thing to do was simply to walk outside and look. She was a painter and my first painting lessons came from her. They were really lessons in looking. She would ask me: What is the color of the tree shadow? Is it blue? Blue- green” Violet? She was teaching me to paint what I saw, not what I knew. What I knew would never be enough.” Color often is a clue to the author’s, poet’s or illustrator’s theme. Robert Frost’s poem, so beautifully illustrated in this version, reminded me of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr, due to similarities of the winter night’ setting, the owls and the mention of colors...

It is an animated movie with not one, but TWO princesses. The Prince is a villain, the person with the magical powers is actually “good.” The act of true love that saves the day is not a kiss from a prince, but rather one sister sacrificing herself for another sister. It is a plot driven by love in a family, rather than solely by a romance (but there is just enough romance to keep us hopeful). It is the 5th highest grossing film of all time and the #1 animated film of all time. It won Academy Awards and Golden Globes. It is relatable, empowering, and filled with Kick-Offs, Feelings, Plans, Mental States, Consequences and Resolutions with very strong characters and constantly changing settings. It is Disney’s phenomenon, Frozen.

Last week, we presented Frozen in a workshop entitled Story Grammar Marker®, ThemeMaker® and Data Collection that was presented to 800 SLPs in NYC’s Board of Education. Videos of story retellings were shown using clips from Disney’s Frozen and an extensive narrative analysis was shared as well. Coincidentally, one of Advanceweb’s latest blogs (http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/sp_2/archive/2014/12/29/using-disney-s-frozen-in-speech-therapy.aspx) focused on Frozen. So, this is perfect timing for you to receive the Story Grammar Marker® Narrative Analysis of 12 episodes (scenes) from Frozen. Click here for the FREE download!

When you look at the narrative analysis, please pay particular attention to the elements of the Critical Thinking Triangle®: kick-offs, feelings, plans and mental states that are so integral to this story. Different episodes are taken from perspectives of different characters. Notice how we have fleshed out the Mental States to help children think about the motivations of characters – what do they believe, realize, remember, think and know. Frozen is rich with mental states – and it is there that this story holds it’s magic. What does Elsa realize about her powers? What does Anna think about Elsa shutting her out? What does Kristoff believe about Anna’s feelings for Hans? What does Hans understand about the sisters’ relationship? What does Elsa remember about her childhood – and how does that motivate her plans throughout the whole story? What does Anna realize and believe that helps her make the decision to save Elsa?

This exciting and engaging story (that is quite familiar to most of us) makes it easy to see how to elaborate and expand the elements of the Critical Thinking Triangle®. Our hope is that you will use this analysis in your therapy or classroom, but also use it as a model for analyzing other movies, stories, books or novels.

Narrative seems to be “having a moment” in research circles, with a number of recent articles being published related to the why and how of developing storytelling skills. One of the most exciting pieces is “Classroom-Based Narrative and Vocabulary Instruction: Results of an Early-Stage, Nonrandomized Comparison Study,” (Gillam, Olszewski, Fargo & Gillam, 2014) detailing a study primarily conducted by Utah State University and published in Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools (and available to ASHA members in full text here).

This study com-pared the results of narrative and vocabulary instruction via a traditional versus an experimental approach in two first grade classrooms...

Maryellen Rooney Moreau presented last weekend at Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Providers’ Conference in San Francisco. In 2003, Winner stated: “Perspective taking is needed for social interaction, academic success and personal problem-solving as an adult.” Social Thinking, the work of Winner, heavily focuses on perspective-taking. Maryellen’s presentation, meant to exemplify this statement, was called Let’s Think About It! Perspective-taking And The Thought Process Of Opinion/Argument Using The Story Grammar Marker®. In her presentation she covered the following topics:

• Narrative development in relation to perspective taking
• Speaking and listening Common Core State Standards and narrative development
• The role of mental models and social emotions in perspective taking
• The Situation Model and the Story Grammar Marker®
• Critical thinking and its relation to perspective-taking and argument
• The shift to Expository text structures in ELA due to the Common Core State Standards
• Thinking about, planning and writing opinion & argument

When asking a child how he or she feels or asking how they think a character feels, the answer is often happy, sad or mad. Occasionally you could get an answer like "scared." MindWing Concepts' manuals for Braidy the StoryBraid® as well as It's All About the Story portray the 6 universal feelings (right). We encourage children to use synonyms for these "feelings" words that also indicate the degrees and nuances of happiness, sadness or anger that they themselves or a character might be feeling. Below are lists of synonyms for the six universal feelings.

MindWing also created an 18"x24" Feelings poster and a Feelings mini poster to help to inspire the use of different emotion words for when children are telling or writing a story, to make the "feelings" more explicit. But, not all "feelings" are the same.

In an article called "Picturebooks and Emotional Literacy" in The Reading Teacher, the author explains that "although there are emotions for all shades and degrees of joys, sadness and anger, it is problematic to create a universal facial expression for envy or pride" (Nikolajeva, p.253). These emotions can be called social emotions. "Unlike basic [universal] emotions, social or higher cognitive emotions such as love, guilt, shame, pride, envy and jealousy are not innate, or least considerably less innate than basic emotions and may be culturally dependent" (Nilolajeva, p.252).

In May, as we celebrate Better Hearing and Speech Month, we look to promote awareness of communication in all its forms, which includes storytelling and discourse. As we close out the month, we wanted to suggest an app that promotes dialogue about communication (and provides a source of expository text), aligns with MindWing’s Thememaker Maps, and suggests a twist on using the SGM® iPad App!

The  San Francisco Exploratorium’s free Sound Uncovered app for iPad provides a wealth of information about hearing and sound...