Howard Wigglebottom, first language lesson of the school year

For this post, I am sharing with you the lesson that I am using for the beginning of the school year. This lesson aligns with common core and meets a variety of language goals.    I am including links to mindwingconcepts.com, Amazon.com, and lessonpix.com for your convenience. 

I work primarily with Preschoolers and kindergarteners, and as of yet, there are no common core standards for preschool.  But I think the standards for Kindergarten give me a good framework for what to work towards.

This lesson will address the following kindergarten standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.K.2 Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.K.4 Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.

This lesson also addresses IEP goals focusing on direction following, increasing MLU, vocabulary, answering “wh” questions, sentence structure, and story narrative. 

Materials:

Braidy The Storybraid (or The Story Grammar Marker) from mindwingconcepts.com.

Howard Wigglebottom Learns to Listen by Howard Binkow and illustrated by Susan Cornelison.

Sentence Strips: “Howard doesn’t listen.” “Howard learns to listen.” I made my sentence strips from lessonpix.com. 

By vcverve at LessonPix.com

By vcverve at LessonPix.com

Howard Wiggle Bottom is an adorable story that tells about a little rabbit named Howard and his adventures in school. He struggles with listening to his teacher and to his friends, which create problems for all involved.  Eventually he is asked to take a time out.  Howard decides to listen and is positively reinforced for his good listening behavior.  This is a good book for the beginning of the school year, because it helps children recognize appropriate and inappropriate behavior in the classroom session.

This book also lends itself well to story retell as it is a complete episode.  However, the book’s audience is younger children who are just beginning their school year.  In addition, some of the children I work with have not been exposed to the StoryBraidy and are not developmentally ready for the later stages of story retell. Time will need to be spent at the beginning stages.

Step 1:

Review or introduce the concept of Character.  
The manual for the Storybraid comes with excellent lessons on how to teach the concept of character.  While I do adjust the lessons to meet the needs of my students and teachers, I do follow the order and structure.

For my non-verbal/newly verbal students, I will address basic concepts of pointing to body parts (i.e. eyes, face and head.) I do hand over hand with them if necessary, but I work towards having them point or touch eyes and head on both the Braidy Doll and on themselves independently.    I also work on naming body parts.

Students using short phrases and following 1 step directions will begin identifying characters.  I begin asking questions such as “Are you a character?”  “Am I a character?”  “Is your friend a character?”  “Is your pet a character?”  We are beginning to answer “who” questions.  We begin discussion the physical traits of a character (has eyes, face, and head) and the fact that a character can “do” things. 

For students that already have exposure to Braidy, we will also talk about setting in terms of place.  We begin to answer “Where” Questions.  “Where are you?” “Is a school a setting?”

Step 2: 
Read and then talk about the book. 

           

For my non-verbal and newly verbal students I have them begin to point to images in the book.  They point to Howard, to his friends, to the teacher and to his friends.  We begin working on naming items in the book.

For my students using short phrases, we will begin answering “who” questions and answering in complete short sentence. 

            “Who is the Character?”

            “Howard is a character.”

            For my older students, we will also begin to answer “Where” questions?

                        “Where is Howard?”

                        “Howard is at school.”

                        “Howard is in the classroom.”

                        “Howard is in the cafeteria.”

                        “Howard is on the playground.”

Step 3: 
Review the book and use sentence strips.

For my non-verbal and newly verbal students I will have them point to the picture as I say the words.  I use hand over hand if necessary to help them understand what I want.

My students short MLU’s will work on using contractions and verb conjugation.  I work on having them  point independently while saying the words of the sentence, but I also model it if necessary.

For my older students we look at the words under the picture to address print recognition.

For me, the majority of my language therapy is done in the classroom.  In each classroom, I am likely to have students at every level and need to be able to meet all of their needs at once.  I typically see my students for two 30 minutes sessions and I recruit the classroom staff to help me with the lessons.  I will probably repeat this lesson 4 to 6 times, reducing my support and increasing student independence.     

Characters

I've recently been participating in the school SLP group on facebook.  It's been really fun. It's pretty active and a good way to find and share information.  If you are a school SLP you should join the School Based Speech and Language group on facebook.

In January of this last school year, my school district brought in Dr. Judy Montgomery, to talk with all the SLP's in our school district about using The Story Grammar Marker (SGM), Braidy the Story Braid, and Thememaker to meet the common core.  Our school district invested some money and made sure that each school had at least one kit.  My school got both the Story Grammar Marker, and Braidy the Story Braid.

Since I work primarily with preschool I've taken over our Braidy puppet, which teaches the same concepts as the Story Grammar Marker, but is cuter.  An SLP from the afore mentioned facebook group asked me what books I recommend for using with the Braidy/Story Grammar Marker.

The first thing you need to address when working with SGM or Braidy is the character.  In general, this is the easiest component to find in books.  I like books with lots of characters to practice the concept.   If you have  an answering "wh" questions IEP goal, think of character as a way to practice "who."

Here are some books for the preschool population that  really help with the concept of character:

Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle are excellent starts to learning about characters.  The books are predictable and helps children work with both expressive and receptive vocabulary as well as works to increase MLU from the pesky 1 or 2 to whopping 4 ("I see a ___.")   I typically use Polar Bear, Polar Bear, because many preschool teachers will already be doing a unit on Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, is an excellent book to work on the concepts of character. The story follows the zoo keeper as he says "good night" to each of the animals in the zoo. Little does he know that the Gorilla is following him, letting everyone out of their cages to follow the Zoo Keeper to bed.  The story is simple, and I work on short phrases with this book: "Good night ______".

I also work on answering both "who" and "where" questions?  "Who is in the bed?" " Where is the armadillo?"    

 Lazy Daisy, Cranky Frankie, by Mary Ellen Jordan and Andrew Weldon is a wonderful book where none of the animals do what is expected.  There are four main characters in the book, a cow, a chicken, a pig, and a dog.  One of the defining characteristics of a character is the ability to do. I use this book to talk about what the characters are doing, even though the characters in this book don't do what they should.  It's a very predictable book, and I work on auditory memory and problem solving by asking the children what the characters should be doing.  As a bonus, the second to the last page has pictures of several animals doing unexpected activities. I like to ask the children what they see that is silly, which helps me address absurdities. I can use a simple sentence structure to work on mlu " ____ don't _____."  For example "Cows don't eat Jelly."

My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann is great story about the trouble Rabbit can get into while trying to solve a problem. There are few words but great pictures and lot's of characters .  I  work on simple prepositions with this book as well.  The plane is "in" the tree.  The squirrel is "on top of" the alligator, etc. We also get to practice inferencing, "What do you think is going to happen?" "How do they feel?"

When talking about Characters, you often need to talk about personality traits.  Is the character nice, mean, funny, silly?  Ten Things I Love About You, by Daniel Kirk is a great book in which the Rabbit tells Piglet all about the great things that he likes about the pig. This is a great story, that leads into talking about personality traits.  With this story, I also  work on some social skills, and will have the student formulate their own sentence about something they like about a classmate.

 I really love The Napping House, by Audrey Wood. This is a great story with lot's of characters.   But I usually introduce this book after I've been working on the Character concept for a while, because it's a great segue into working on Settings.  The setting stays the same throughout the book, but it's repeated over and over.  "...on the bed, in the Napping House, where everyone is sleeping." Along with characters, and introducing the concept of setting, my students will practice answering "wh" questions "who," "what," and "where."  "Who is in the bed?"  "Where is the ____?" "What is he or she doing?" I also target prepositions of "in" and "on."

The truth is, you can pick up just about any book for toddlers and preschoolers and work on characters.

 I want to mention I usually do 4 to 5 hours per book for my preschoolers.  They love repetition rely on the predictability.  I find I have an easier time teaching the concepts once they are familiar with the book.   When I've worked with older children, I find that I can do about 4 or 5 readings before they become bored, but I still find that familiarity of the story increases their independence in retelling the story.  

For more information on the Braidy the Story Braid or the Story Grammar Marker check out http://www.mindwingconcepts.com/.  You can also take a peek at Super Duper's Webber Story Builder, which is similar.