MindWing Concepts Blog

We are thrilled to share that on February 17th, Maryellen Rooney Moreau welcomed her 4th grandchild into the world! Casey is Sheila Moreau's first child and Maryellen's 3rd granddaughter. This is the first picture of Casey that was taken.

She continues to be very alert and Maryellen is already studying her language development, noticing that Casey focuses her eyes on the “characters and settings” around her. Casey loves the sound of Nana’s voice (as do so many of Maryellen’s workshop participants)! Today, on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, one of our favorite holidays, Casey is one month old!..

StoryBird is very helpful for using technology to develop story telling and story writing skills. However, while providing artwork and a very simple platform for adding text, it does not provide the narrative structure necessary for writing the actual text of the story. Using Story Grammar Marker, students can have the structure to know what parts go into the story. The Common Core State Standards call for the blending of narrative and expository text in lessons as well as integrating technology and multimedia. The following lesson demonstrates it...

On Friday, November 15, 2013 we will be presenting MindWing’s new SGM® App for Story Grammar Marker® in Learning Lab #1 in the Exhibit Hall at ASHA in Chicago from 9:30-10:15am. Prizes will include FREE App Codes for SGM® App and All4MyChild apps and EVERYONE will receive a Story Grammar Marker® App T-SHIRT!

For those of you not attending, here is some of the information that will be covered...

October 31 is Halloween. According to history.com, “every October, carved pumpkins peer out from porches and doorsteps in the United States and other parts of the world. Gourd-like orange fruits inscribed with ghoulish faces and illuminated by candles are a sure sign of the Halloween season. The practice of decorating “jack-o’-lanterns”—the name comes from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack—originated in Ireland, where large turnips and potatoes served as an early canvas. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, home of the pumpkin, and it became an integral part of Halloween festivities.”...

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!...

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.