Informational

Maryellen Rooney Moreau with Braidy the StoryBraid® and Story Grammar Marker®, holding a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg! (right) Mulberry Street is a 10-minute walk from our office and it is this Mulberry Street in Springfield that inspired Dr. Seuss’ first published book And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. Today, Maryellen took a drive over (it is way too cold and snowy to walk) with Braidy® and SGM® for a Dr. Seuss photo opportunity in honor of Dr. Seuss Day.  Dr. Seuss would have been 111 on March 2nd and he grew up right here in Springfield, MA...

Maryellen Rooney Moreau, MEd, CCC-SLP, founder and President of MindWing Concepts, Inc. received the 2014 Alice H. Garside Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Dyslexia Association, Massachusetts Branch (MABIDA) for “exemplary leadership, service or achievement in a field that directly or indirectly furthers the mission of MABIDA.” MABIDA’s mission, in part, ´promotes, encourages and supports the preparation and continued education of professionals and other personnel to ameliorate the impact of dyslexia and related disorders and to promote optimal methods of reading instruction for all children.” Maryellen’s work certainly fits this criteria.

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...

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...

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.