Narrative Language

Do you have any students who are working on narrative language? My guess would be YES! Not only is the ability to tell/retell a story essential for academic and classroom success, but how frustrating it must be for our students who can't tell their teachers/friends what exciting event happened last night or tell their moms/dads what happened at school! As SLPs we are often able to help our students fill in the missing information from their stories so we understand what they are talking about, but what about those times (99% of their week) when we are not around? Here's what I've been doing in therapy to try to help!

I LOVE all of the fabulous products on the Mindwing Concepts website. However, working in a school (3 schools to be exact) there wasn't budget money for me to purchase any of their "big" packs of therapy supplies. Trying to get the most "bang for my buck" I purchased the Story Grammar Marker App off of itunes.

The app is fabulous, but I found that asking my students to tell/retell a whole story at one time was too difficult for them so I decided to break it down further by creating tangible items for my students to use to help them learn the icons and practice talking about one story grammar element at a time. I talked my finance into stopping by the Dollar Tree and Target and here's what I came home with.....

These items have been a huge success in helping my students learn the icons for the SGM App. When purchasing each item, I was trying to think about things that would provide the most sensory input. The "character" icon is represented by a green loofah with googly eyes attached. The "setting" icon is represented by a star shaped push light. The "emotions" icon is represented by a squishy heart I found in the dollar section at Target around Valentine's Day. The "kickoff" icon is a pair of shoes from an old Mr. Potato Head. The "plan" icon is represented by a fuzzy glove. The "actions" icons are represented by the beads on a pipe cleaner, and the "wrap up" icon is represented by the silky ribbon with a pipe-cleaner heart attached. The introduction of these tangible items has really caused my students to raise be more active participants because they want to hold the item (and they only get to do that if they are willing to describe that part of the story)!
We have been working on retelling stories, but we will shortly be moving on to creating our own stories. I am so excited to start using my Story Starters: An Interactive, No Print Activity to help my students generate their own unique stories. This packet contains story prompts for the character, setting, and "kick off" event. It also contains several different printable graphic organizers to help students expand their descriptions of their story elements.

Here is a quick overview of how this packet works. Students will start on one of the main page for "who" . Students click on one of the question marks. The question mark will take them to their "who" for their story.

Then they can either click on the "who" star to take them back to the main "who" page to allow another student to choose their "who", or they can click on the "where" page to take them to the "where" main page. Here are a few of the options for the characters prompts.

The "where" section works the same, allowing students to choose their setting and then either return to the "where" main page so another student can choose their setting, or advancing forward to the "event" or "kick-off" main page.

Here is a sample of one of the setting prompt pages.

The "event" page is set up the same way as the "who" and "where" pages. Students can select their event and then either return to the "event" main page, or go back to the "who" page so another student can start from the beginning.

Here is a sample one of the event pages.

Here are a few examples of the printable graphic organizers that accompany the story starters to help students organize and expand their stories.

How do you work on narrative language with your students? I'd love to hear what apps, strategies, and products you are using to help your students expand and organize their stories!