Story Structure Hop

This is an activity that I have been using for the last month but was too lazy to take a picture/write about it. My client has problems writing and retelling a complete story. During assessment he would either say a few words about a story or else write down a sentence to tell a story. I have been explicitly teaching him 4 main parts of a story: setting (including character, place, and time), problem, action to solve problem, and result. We started by just listening to basic oral stories and then matched direct sentences from the story to the different parts. Once he recognized the 4 parts, I wanted to do something a little more active.

I bought cheap foam rectangles from Joann's and printed off category cards for each story structure component. I let him choose which color he wanted for each element (e.g. red for problem). After direct teaching and modeling the use of the story squares, we now use them for brainstorming and retelling. For example, as I read a familiar or unfamiliar story, he will hop to the part of the story as I read. He also creatively plans a written story by hopping to each square and brainstorming that part.

Yesterday proved that the squares work because as I read him a spooky Halloween story, he asked if he could use the squares to remember all of the parts. He also used his finger on the desk to point to invisible space as he was visualizing the squares in his head. It was pretty cool. His storytelling has improved drastically since the first day of therapy.

Sorry for the horrible picture; I was lazy and forgot the category cards and blurriness :)

Superhero Pow

Right now in therapy we are working on editing sentences. My kid tends to leave out punctuation and capitalization. He also doesn't differentiate between a sentence and a full story. In order to make him aware of his capital and punctuation errors, I have him do checklists after he writes stories.

Yesterday I copied his writing sample and cut it into sentence strips. This way he is able to edit his own story in his own handwriting. First, I had him read his story out loud. Then, he had to guess which sentences were actually sentences and not just run-ons or just phrases. Finally, I gave him the checklist and he had to be the capitalization & punctuation detective.

Here is the checklist I made:

I originally got this idea from pinterest, specifically from an anchor chart for "superhero swag" but I didn't really like the swag part of it. He was really cute when I explained the checklist to him. We both did the pow gesture and then, at the end, I asked him if his story had pow and he said, "Double pow! Pow pow!"

Oh Hey Mediocre Life

So here is the thing: just like everything else, this blog has fallen to the wayside. Not only am I super busy, but my therapy session today was cancelled so I haven't made up any new activities for a week. Let me tell you though, having a cancelled session hasn't decreased the chaos of my life.

For the first month or so of school I didn't allow myself to watch TV or really do anything fun. This was great, I focused solely on school and did not let myself have any fun. Unfortunately, this weekend I made the mistake of watching TV, and then, the dam broke. I can't stop. Not only did I watch all the reruns of The Voice, Teen Mom, and Glee, I also went to the pumpkin patch and a wedding with my boyfriend. This weekend=school fail.

The point of this story is this... I got a B+ on my research methods midterm yesterday. That B+ has been haunting me for the past 24 hours. Every time I close my eyes it flashes before me. I asked one of my friends yesterday, "When did I turn into a mediocre student?" Last year an A- felt like failing and now I'm consistently doing an underwhelming job in school.

This isn't an "oh I'm so sad about my life" blog post. It's just a reality check. Life will never go back to how it was. I don't think I'll ever be a consistently A+ person again and that's a hard thing to accept. But I'm learning to deal with it. Case in point: I'm sitting here watching The Voice and eating ice cream. And I have a quiz tomorrow. Oh well, bring it on quiz, bring it on.

One last thing, grad school has turned me into a much crankier person. I find myself glaring at people and thinking about the many idiots in the world. I used to be so sweet and forgiving but not anymore. Here is a video that reminds me of myself:

Plural -s Race

We are working on adding plurals onto base words. He is great at adding -s but struggles when the base words require -es (words that end in s, ch, sh, etc). Since he loves competition, we are going to do a word find race.

Before we begin,  I'll ask him what to add at the end of a word to make it plural. If he just says –s then I will write dress on the board and ask, “what if the word is dress, would you add a third –s onto the word?”  I will explain the rule that when a word ends in –s, you need to add an –es to the end to make it plural.

My absolutely horrible plural -s/-es story

Then, we will each get a reading passage. I'll set the timer for 1 minute and tell him to find as many -s and -es words as he can before the time runs out. I'll remind him that it is a race so try to find as many as possible. We will each race to find and highlight the words. When the time runs out, we will count our words and compare. Then, he will use write his words on Post-It notes. Using a sorting chart written on the white board, he will place each word in the correct category (-s or -es). 

After sorting the words, he will pick 5 -es words that he likes. He will then use the sentence worksheet to write a sentence about each one. Using a writing modality helps the meaning/spelling stick in his head. Here is the sentence worksheet:

Long Vowel Word Wall

One of my goals for this semester (not an official goal, just my own personal goal) is for my kid and I to create a word wall every month. He can keep track of words we are working on plus it is a good transition task from academic to fun. However, when I started thinking about a word wall, I got so bored. Usual word walls are just a poster board with the word written across it. I decided that I'll do themes for each month: October Halloween, November Thanksgiving, and December Christmas. (I'm lucky because my kiddo's family is a-okay with celebrating the holidays in therapy.)

Since I'm focusing on the long vowel a spelling pattern, I'll have a ghost "head" for each pattern. This week at least we are focusing on -ay, -ea-, and -ai-. My kid will write the words onto white slips of paper, sort them by pattern, and attach them to the ghost heads using glue:

Here is an easy ghost head that I found on google images

Our goal is to make each ghost a body. With each white piece of paper, the ghosts will get longer and longer. He can cut each slip so that the ghosts take shape. This also means he'll have to manipulate the words smaller and smaller so that they will fit onto the ghost.

I'll connect all the ghosts together using coat hangers so that we can hang them around the therapy room as visual cues. This will also make comparing them easier.

At the end of the month we can do some comparisons:

• Which spelling pattern ghost is the longest?
• Which ghost is the shortest?
• Predict which long a spelling pattern has the most words (probably the longest ghost)
• Count the # of words that we have found that fit into the spelling pattern

The word wall after the first day, these ghosts are going to be huge!

Hit the Pattern

Pick three different spelling patterns within a broad category (long vowels). For example, choose 5 spelling words for long a silent -e (crate, rate, lane, frame, ate), 5 spelling words for long ai (paint, faint, rain, main, train), and 5 spelling words for ay (day, Monday, pay, fray, clay).

Work on these patterns earlier in the week so that the kid is familiar with them. For the game, print off the three patterns (-aCe, -ai-, and -ay) on large paper and make them big & bold. Lay next to each other on the floor. Give the child time to look over the patterns and think about words that fit. Explain that you will tell him a word and he needs to toss the spike ball onto the right pattern.

Imagine these cut out and even bigger

Call out spelling words one by one. "Crate" and the child should throw the ball onto the correct pattern -aCe-. If he lands on the wrong one (intentionally), ask him to write the word on the whiteboard. If he spells it wrong, tell him to correct it by using a different pattern. If he gets it right, he gets a point. If not, correct the spelling on the board. Repeat activity.

Extra activities:

• add the words onto his long vowel a word wall poster
• write a sentence using each of the words
• draw a picture of the word (if possible) and make up a story about it 
• "The bunny crawled into the crate for a rest but then he got carted across the ocean..."
• have him find the words within curriculum text 

This is an easy activity to use to see if teaching is being generalized to other words. It is also easy to take data on: if he spells it right, you know the pattern is known. If he gets it wrong but then can apply the right pattern when he spells it out, then he needs more scaffolding. If he gets it wrong each time, he needs to be re-taught the pattern.

My spike "ball"

Roll, Write, Rewrite

I got this idea on pinterest. I saw that someone had made a roll and revise sentence dice game here: thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com. But, since it is not age-appropriate for my kiddo, I decided to tweak it a bit for my lesson this week.

One of my goals for this semester is to have my client write accurate and complete sentences within a narrative. After evaluating the three writing samples that I collected the past two weeks, I realized that he typically leaves out punctuation, capitalization, and cohesive devices. For this lesson, I really want to focus on the punctuation and capitalization. I also added in some long vowel pattern and past tense -ed spelling errors to see if he could catch them. 

First, I made sentence squares. Each square has three sentences that are incorrect. I'll cut the sentence squares out after I print them and glue them onto an empty Kleenex box. 

Examples of inaccurate sentences

After the kid rolls, he will correct the sentence that he lands on. First, he will go through and mark everything that is wrong. Then, we will check to make sure he has all the errors marked. After that, I'll give him a fill in the blank worksheet so that he can fix the errors without having to write all the sentences out again. He hates writing so I figured that I would limit the amount he has to do with this activity. We might not get through all the sentences in one day so it would be a nice carry-over activity.

Fill-in-the-blank editing worksheet