Tag Archives : Fiction Text

Oral and Written Story Retell: Turkey Trouble

This year, I discovered a new fiction book, Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. It is an excellent book that is perfect for students to practice retelling stories in speech language therapy lessons, special education resource classrooms, or regular education classrooms as well. 

Today, three of my groups did a picture walk with the story by looking at the pictures to gather ideas about what the story would be about. Then, we listened to the audio book and each student had their own book to actively engage in the story as it was read aloud. Next, I asked questions about the story and modeled orally retelling the story. After that, each student had a chance to verbally retell the story by expressing the characters, setting, sequential events, and why the main character did certain actions in the story. 

This is a captivating story about a turkey on Farmer Jake’s farm who disguises himself in different animal costumes in an attempt to not be captured, slaughtered, and cooked for Thanksgiving Dinner. There is a delightful end of the story that you will have to read for yourself! 

Here is a picture of my students actively writing their story summaries after practicing their oral summaries. 

I played classical music while they wrote and they were truly working with minimal need for redirection. I was pleasantly surprised that I had 1 group of students with Mild Autism and 2 groups of students with SLI and SLD actively engaged in writing in my speech language classroom! With my ASD morning group, I wrote a written summary while they wrote as well. I believe that it is important to model all expected tasks for students to increase their task initiation and successful completion.

Here’s a picture of the summary I wrote this morning. 

This was definitely an awesome lesson! On their next session this week, they will complete a turkey arts and craft activity on the other side of their summaries. I am going to make copies of their completed work to keep as a work sample. They will get to take their original home for further oral language practice at home …hopefully when they share with their family. 

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Tamara

Launch into Literacy

The beginning of the school year is an ideal time for speech language pathologists, teachers, students, and parents to intentionally launch into literacy. We are surrounded by the four essential areas of literacy on a daily basis: listening, speaking, reading, writing. I wonder how many moments a person could be observed engaging in one of these four domains. I’m sure the number would be quite high. Imagine what it would be like to have a literacy pedometer that counts how many “literacy interactions” you have everyday. Hmmm…something to ponder! Ha!

Fiction Book of the Week: Green Shamrocks

This week, some of my speech-language students in grades K-2 listened to a CD with a reading of the fiction book Green Shamrocks by Eve Bunting. The learning objectives for the lesson were for them to answer listening comprehension questions, sequence the story events, and verbally retell the story. I have one student in kindergarten who stutters so he also practiced his speech fluency using his slow and easy speech. 

I was lucky to have multiple copies of this book, so each student had a chance to do their own “picture walk” by looking at the illustrations in order to make predictions about what the story would be about. The students did a great job naming the characters  before they heard the story and shared their thoughts about what was going to happen in the story. 

They did a great job answering literal who, what, where, when, and why questions that were directly stated in the story. They needed some verbal prompts to sequence the events and orally retell the story.  

I see most of my students 2-3 times a week for speech-language therapy. So, on the 2nd therapy day we completed an arts & craft activity. Here are a few photos:

Thanks for visiting the blog! Happy early St. Patrick’s Day!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss in Speech-Language Therapy

Last week, my school had a celebration for Read Across America Week and Friday was a celebration in honor of Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. Some of my speech-language students had the opportunity to practice language arts vocabulary, orally summarizing story events, sequencing events, and speech articulation skills during Dr. Seuss themed activities. One of my favorite activities of the week involved using the book: The Lorax. I differentiated or modified instruction as needed for my students based on their IEP goals. Here is a picture of books I used:

I previewed relevant language arts vocabulary that we typically discuss with fiction stories. For example, I asked my students to name the title, author, and illustrator prior to reading the story. I pointed out the publisher and explained that I would be their narrator. During the story, I modeled “think alouds” and had my students name the characters, describe the characters’ traits, and point of view of the story. After the story, we summarized the plot and compared/contrasted what happened at the introduction vs. conclusion of the story.

I love this book because at the end of the story it promotes preserving the environment and restoring the Bar-ba-loot Bears’ habitat by planting trees. So, my students eagerly created their own “Truffula Forest” from the seed that the Once-ler had at the end of the story after he selfishly cut down all the trees for his “Thneed” clothing manufacturing business. Here are some examples of my students’ beautiful and colorful creations:

Here was our inspiration page for the craft activity:

These bright colors have me looking forward to fun speech-language craft activities with spring and summer themes during lessons in my speech-language therapy classroom!! Oh yeah…I should mention that I am eager DESPITE the light snow flurries we had in Atlanta over the weekend.

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!! Stay tuned for resources to support the English/Language Arts and Reading Common Core Curriculum Standards.