December 21, 2020 1 Comment
Like most of you, many of our holiday traditions this year have been altered or cancelled, but one we can still count on in our house is reading the poem ’Twas The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. We have at our home some stunning versions of this famous poem in children’s picture book form. ’Twas The Night Before Christmas was first published with the title Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas almost 200 years ago, on December 23, 1823 in New York’s Troy Sentinel. It is this poem that gave rise to the image of Santa Claus we know and love in the United States and Canada; a jolly, round, old man with a white beard and red suit who drives a sleigh through the sky to bring gifts to children around the world on Christmas...
May 27, 2020
MindWing’s icons for narrative and expository language can make conversation about any TOPIC a strategic and scaffolded one. Last month I recorded a free webinar with Maryellen (Technology Tools to Engage Children in Science & Social Studies During Distance Learning Sessions) on expository text structures (ThemeMaker®) and using MindWing’s icons in context with technology resources. In this post, I’ll be giving some examples of expository-embedded resources online that can be used in teletherapy sessions. By expository-embedded, I mean resources that don’t necessarily say one, another, also, or first, then next, but can be used to form conversations and reviews with structures like List and Sequence. Take for example, Google Earth. This now-web-based interactive globe allows you to simply search and navigate in order to provide tours, and what is a tour but a LIST (or SEQUENCE) of places within a main idea or overall location...
April 28, 2020
Today, we talk about a list of books for older children. These books are great for teaching components of narrative development using our Story Grammar Marker® icons. If you and your students understand these components and can use them to focus the discussion of the story itself, they will be better at listening and reading comprehension. Each of the following lend themselves to a read-aloud, although each may be read traditionally. Also, each of the stories have some form of information, knowledge, used by the various authors. For instance, dePaola’s book begins with a hurricane; Fleischman’s concerns a garden: planting, sunlight, vegetables, etc...
April 24, 2020
Last of 3-Day Lesson Ideas for Settings: When choosing Big Red Barn as a follow-up to the “At the Farm” assigned passage, my purpose–as a parent at home–was to use the book to elaborate on the topic that was presented in the assigned passage, as a teacher may do in school. I wasn’t worried about lexiles. I wanted a book that would appeal to a child in kindergarten to read for fun and maybe to teach a few things. When looking through Big Red Barn I found many elaborations!
April 23, 2020
Lesson Outcome: After completing this sequence, you will have expanded the initial lesson “At the Farm” provided for the student. Furthermore, you will have learned how to differentiate a lesson for children of different abilities. Also, you will have noticed that there are many levels within the activity: there will be some students who are able to tell a personal narrative readily. At the same time, there will be students who are at the stage of assembling the animals in order and putting them into the “barn.” Both children are learning the “personal narrative sequence” and will progress at their own pace...
April 22, 2020
To broaden this lesson about settings and our conversation about a farm, we are providing other setting references: Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown is the selection for today’s mini-lesson reading. Other suggestions are provided in the handout...