Frontpage Nov2021 with Westby Quote
In 2003, Carol Westby, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, did a review of the SGM® for Word of Mouth magazine; in it, she writes:
Problems at the discourse level of language development are evident when students experience difficulties using language to think, communicate, and/or learn. Our goal is to give children – regardless of age, ability, race, socioeconomic status, or culture – the literacy skills, problem solving skills, and communicative competence to be successful in school and in life.
By providing professional development training and materials for teachers, parents and specialists, MindWing Concepts helps children:
- improve literacy skills such as comprehension, speaking, writing, and critical thinking
- “tell their story” (narrative), convey information (expository), interact (conversation)
- recognize the emotions and motivations of others (social emotional learning)
- take perspective
- construct an argument
- build empathy
- resolve conflicts in life.
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach and related focus areas are designed to link language to literacy by targeting “discourse development” (conversation, narratives, and expository text) through use of engaging, hands-on, multi-sensory tools and colorful, distinctive icons.
Implementation of this Approach and instructional materials in the home, clinic, school, district, state, or at the national level supports children’s progress in essential academic, social, and personal areas. Ultimately, we want to help children become literate, confident, healthy, independent, empathetic, happy people in their homes, schools, their communities and workplaces, and in their interpersonal relationships.
“Telling stories puts a tremendous load on working memory because students must engage in several activities simultaneously. When children tell a story, they must keep in mind the overall gist of the story they are telling while simultaneously organizing each utterance, linking the utterances together in a temporal/causal sequence, and making certain that all utterances link to the theme and overall organization of the story. The Story Grammar Marker® reduces the load on working memory by externalizing the global structure and sequence of components in stories. This allows students to concentrate on translating their ideas into words and sentences to convey the content of each element of the story. When using the SGM®, they do not have to keep in mind where they are in the story.”