Read Works Provides Access to Handy Text Passages

Expository text passages are handy for language intervention. There's a lot you can teach with a passage as a context!

I attended (well, watched from an "overflow theater") a great presentation at ASHA Convention in Denver, Practical Strategies for Middle School and High School Language Learning Disorders (Wallach, Bartholomew & Charlton), that covered a number of strategies that can be practiced in the context of expository (or narrative) text:
-Recognizing and interpreting subordinate clauses
-Sentence Combining (see the work and resources of Killagon)
-Teaching Self-Monitoring and Metacognition (I've recently been putting the TWA Strategy on a Bookmark for students:

-Within the above, supporting comprehension and expression (summarizing) is analysis of text structure and use of graphic organizers; Mindwing's Thememaker® and the Thinking Maps programs are both approaches to understanding expository text structure.

So, where to get the contexts? I recently discovered ReadWorks- this website provides free access to reading passages and much more, with skill and strategy units on many topics in comprehension. The passages are searchable or organized by various categories--they are also Lexile-leveled. The website recently released a collection geared toward expository text structures as mentioned above.

Check out Readworks and sign up for a free account. The website is iPad-friendly, so you can activate Speak Screen while using a passage to have it read aloud, or download and "Open In..." an app such as Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to use highlighting and other annotation tools. 

EdCamp Access- Near to MA? Register!

I am happy to be helping to organize the EdCamp Access unconference this year. Hope to see some of you there. Information is below!

EdCampAccess, in the tradition of EdCamps that have taken place around the world, is an unconference devoted to K -12 educators who work with struggling learners. It is not limited to special educators, but anyone who wants to reach students who struggle with reading, writing, organization, behaviors, executive function skills, etc. It will start with a student panel and then evolve into a "collaborative conference" where the conference attendees help to build and create the experience. As is the format for unconferences, we do not schedule any sessions; instead, we do so together as a group at the start of the day. Attendees may choose to facilitate a session, lead discussions or attend sessions of interest to further their professional learning.
Where: Marshall Simonds Middle School 114 Winn Street Burlington, MA
When: April 30, 2016
Registration begins at 8:30
App Smackdown and prizes at 2:30
Closing remarks - 3:15
Cost: FREE

Organizers:
Patric Barbieri - @PatricBarbieri
Karen Janowski - @karenjan
Beth Lloyd - @lloydcrew
Sean Sweeney - @speechtechie

REGISTER HERE

A Simple Idea: Helping technology work for you, not against you

I recently started individual therapy with a little friend who I also see in a group. In this group, we have used social pictures to build situational awareness with strategies such as Ward & Jacobsen's STOP acronym (Space, Time, Objects, People). I continue to find my iPad very useful for this as one can find and save pictures easily, and when displaying from the Photos app, it also serves as an engagement tool.

However, kiddo has a cute little habit of sweeping the picture to the next or previous one when the group is discussing pictures. This seems to be hysterical for some reason, and it can result in a "Silly Tornado (per Social Thinking®) for the rest of the group, and a Yellow Zone for me.

In individual therapy, we are working on comprehension and starting out the Visualizing and Verbalizing® program, and I saved a simple kid-oriented picture of a child on a bike to work on introducing the structure words for describing a gestalt. The past behavior occurred to me and I wondered if Guided Access would allow me to disable sweeping to another picture. It does- simply toggle the Touch switch off at the bottom of the screen and, no sweeping!



I admit to a little self-satisfaction when there was in fact an attempt to "follow one's own plan" and sweep the picture, but it also allowed for a quick teachable moment about why that restriction needed to be put in place, and what to do in the future to earn more trust from others. And we focused on the activity with no power struggles.

For instructions on how to use Guided Access, click here.

My Valentine to Doodle Buddy- Part 4

All you need is love and Doodle Buddy. Well, that's not true, but to complete my valentine to Doodle Buddy, here are a few final thoughts! Got more? Please let us know in the comments!

Comic Strip Conversations: Doodle Buddy is an easy place to implement Carol Gray's method of using sketching to indicate setting, people, scripts and perspectives (word/thought balloons) to preview or review a social situation.

Future Picture/Future Self in a Situation: Executive Function Specialists Sarah Ward and Kristin Jacobsen have developed great methods and vocabulary for executive functioning therapy. Making a "future picture" involves using photo or making a sketch of a task based on what it is going to look like when it is done. Doodle Buddy is of course a great sketching tool-see the above mini-golf hole that we planned to make from pool noodles and a Playmobil farmhouse as an obstacle, which greatly helped the kids to work together to construct the hole. You can also add a photo as a background and annotate it with circles to highlight features of the future picture, as well as text annotations. A group of mine has had a great deal of difficulty with transitioning within and out of sessions, so Doodle Buddy assisted in previewing situations and talking about our "future self." This helped the students focus on the relevant spaces for transitioning through the waiting room, for example, the coat rack and not the feelings calendar on the desk, and objects such as coats, among other discussion points. One beauty of Doodle Buddy is that you can then change the background and talk about how the situation would be "same but different" in a different setting.

Provide nonverbal feedback in the moment: Doodle Buddy is also available on the iPhone. If the therapy context is not one in which I have my iPad handy, I keep shots such as the numbers from The Incredible 5-Point Scale available in my Favorites (in the Photos app). This enables me to provide quick, nonverbal feedback to a group without shouting over them or interrupting. This has been useful after teaching a group scales such as a "chaos" scale (1-5 ranging from no one talking to multiple people raising their voice chaotically, in which case I might display my device with a "4" on it when things are getting out of control) or topicality (1-5 ranging from connected comment/question to uncomfortable shift in topic, which I might use if a group member makes a comment that is a 4- WTC or Whopping Topic Change).

Thanks for enduring my poorly drawn visuals, which I have nonetheless found very useful in scaffolding language, social, and executive function skills!

My Valentine to Doodle Buddy- Part 3

Love means never having to say "WHERE ARE MY MARKERS?"

In this exploration of the free app Doodle Buddy, I have been giving examples of how I find this deceptively simple app very useful on a day-to-day basis. Using one app in many ways is a suggested remedy for App Fatigue- being overwhelmed by an internal pressure to keep up with all the apps available- perhaps resulting in giving up on using technology, a contextual and engaging tool, in your work!

A few additional loving examples are offered below as we approach Valentine's Day, though I encourage you to add your ideas in the comments.

Visualizing an idea or story setting: I recently was reading along with a group the book Iron Thunder, the story of the critical battle between the ironclad ships Merrimack and Monitor during the Civil War. An important plot element is the main character's role during a key battle: to run between the turret and the wheelhouse to convey orders from the captain about what and where to shoot. This was a very spatial situation for students to grasp and benefitted from a sketch; this also allowed us to reference previous story elements such as the storm that damaged the speaking tube between the turret and wheelhouse. Visualizing in this way formed a scaffolding to cause-effects relationships in the story and its overall story grammar. This sketch above was actually made in Paper by Fifty-Three, a similar app, during a time where Doodle Buddy was in need of an update, but you can also see a sketch of the ship as an overall setting, based on a text passage.

Stickwriting Stories: Similar to the above idea, Stickwriting (Ukrainetz, 1998) is a "...strategy in which children represent the characters, settings, and sequences of actions with simple, chronologically or episodically organized stick-figure drawings. As a quick and easy representational strategy, pictography is applicable to both individual language intervention and inclusive classroom settings." Doodle Buddy provides all the tools needed to bring Stickwriting to any context, and engagement to boot. In the above picture, we used Stickwriting as a strategy alongside the We Can Make it Better program; in this series of stories, students are presented with social situations gone wrong and cued to "make it better" through social narrative problem solving and pose "instead of..." scenarios. Maria had refused to help Bob rake the leaves for jumping piles, and the student here illustrated how they could work together to make piles. I have found that it's helpful and more salient (and supportive of more oral narrative practice) for students to illustrate alternative scenarios rather than simply describe the actions.

Illustrate concepts on the fly: I work with an adult client who has significant regulation and processing issues. Doodle Buddy is often helpful for me to write/illustrate key ideas in lessons and discussions, and grabs his attention as well. Above you see a lesson about the structure of conversation and strategies for accepting/responding to others' opinions in interactions. Using Doodle Buddy has the additional benefit of providing a sharable visual to his caregivers about strategies we have addressed in sessions. Keep in mind you can also easily add text to a Doodle Buddy sketch.

Provide simple visuals about methodologies: If I don't have, say, a Zones of Regulation visual or Social Behavior Map handy, no problem. I can just do a quick drawing as you see above re: Zones. In some cases this enables me to provide a teen- or adult-friendly visual whereas the methodology visuals may be geared toward younger students.

A few last ideas will follow tomorrow!

My Valentine to Doodle Buddy-Part 2

Doodle Buddy is a many splendored thing.

In my last post I talked about apps that are useful for many purposes and contexts being a great target for integrating technology- especially if you have come down with App Fatigue. One app in particular- Doodle Buddy- is deceptively simple but adaptable to many contexts and activities.

Before I go on (and on), I need to mention that Doodle Buddy's continued functioning as an app is a real gift from its developer, Pinger. Pinger originally developed the app and went on to focus on communications technologies--not communication skills technologies, but functions like texting. As iOS evolved, Doodle Buddy broke a few times, but the developer was responsive to pleas to update it (I assume these came from more sources than me), even though it has nothing to do with the focus of their company. The app was last updated, in fact, on February 3 of this year. So thanks, Pinger, for continuing to make this (free, I might add) app work.

Doodle Buddy does have ads in it, but I find these to be so unobtrusive as to be virtually unnoticeable. Nevertheless, if these bother you, you can remove them with a small in-app purchase under the wrench/settings menu.

So, 3 more uses for Doodle Buddy:

Make a play plan. I used Doodle Buddy here to preview a play activity from Social Thinking®'s Incredible Flexible You. The group benefited from talking in advance (and making suggestions about) how we could use a flipchart cardboard to be a boat, diving platform and cave, and the actions we could perform (a narrative action sequence or more) while we "shared imaginations."

Make a scene with stamps. Doodle Buddy's stamps can be as reinforcing as actual stamps or stickers. You can change the background, add a background from your photos (more on that later) or draw a grid for showing number of trials of a skill or target. See Jessica Gosnell's great 2011 article mentioning Doodle Buddy as an app that can be repurposed easily, and don't miss the link to her visual examples including the uses of stamps.

Develop description, categorization or other language underpinnings in the context of curriculum. Doodle Buddy is currently one of the easiest ways to draw on top of an image. You can save images from Safari and add them as a background in Doodle Buddy (tap the Tic Tac Toe icon). In this case, as a student was studying the Civil War, we used a resource to identify (generally) the Union vs. Confederate States- with a focus on the main ideas and trends e.g. the West was largely out of the picture, South vs. North as key spatial concepts as well. Annotating pictures can be useful to extract a story or other language concept from many curriculum topics.

A few more ideas will follow for Valentine's Day!

My Valentine to Doodle Buddy- Part 1

A theme in recent presentations is repeat attendees (yay!) who report that their initial excitement about integrating apps in their work has waned a bit. Thankfully, following the presentation and collaboration with their colleagues, a number of people have reported to me that they have renewed excitement and additional contexts where they think these tools will be helpful for their work.

The fact is, kids' excitement and engagement in using technology has NOT generally waned, nor has the potential for its usefulness. I think as the years have passed and there are more options and possibilities, for us as clinicians it has resulted in a tendency to become overwhelmed or tune out for other reasons. For this reason, many of my trainings have included modules on overcoming "App Fatigue," which I believe should be included in the DSM 6. App Fatigue symptoms include an inability to keep up with all of the evolving information about technology (while feeling one needs to do so), and a change in mindset from "I can do that" to "Why bother?" While questions about how much technology to use and when to use it are positive, we want to avoid these debilitating effects. Treatment can include positive self-talk ("However much technology I use is just the right amount") and cutting down on the number of apps one uses, but looking to increase the number of ways you use them creatively and contextually.

I'd prescribe Doodle Buddy, which in a mixed-metaphor here I would like to celebrate in a kind of valentine over the next few days. Doodle Buddy is a simple drawing tablet app which has so many uses (it's free for iOS and not available for Android, but Drawing Desk has similar features). Doodle Buddy has the features you'd expect in this kind of app and more: tools such as a marker, chalk or pencil in all the colors you'd want, text, and addition of template, color or photo backgrounds.

Let me count the ways I often find Doodle Buddy more useful than paper in various intervention contexts:
-Markers dry out and annoy me, causing me to have to think about more objects to bring into an intervention session, including the colors I might need for a particular context.
-Paper is bad for the earth, can cut you, and is yet another object I have to think about.
-Students tend to be more engaged when this app is used as opposed to pencil and paper (though both mediums are important to work in at different times).
-Anything you make with Doodle Buddy is sharable and becomes an artifact of treatment activities (you can save your screen to the Photos app and from there to Google Drive or other places).

To end with a specific use (more to come), I long ago lost my "felts" from the Visualizing and Verbalizing® training I attended many years ago. V and V is a methodology that supports formation of "gestalt imagery" (basically mental pictures and "mind movies") to aid in comprehension. In addition to reading comprehension I have found it useful in listening both in academic and social contexts; it aligns with the Social Thinking® concept of "sharing an imagination." Students gradually learn to internalize "structure words" (e.g. what, color, size, shape, where, background, movement) to describe a visualization of language. The meat of the program is in the "sentence by sentence" level where paragraph-length information or stories are presented and students form images of the story as it progresses. The "felts" provide structure as each sentence is imaged and, later, a frame for retelling- "Here I saw a caterpillar who is black with red rings- he's moving slowly down a branch looking for a twig to crawl out on..." You can see some research citations- not all from Lindamood-Bell!- here.

Felts are fun, and you can make new ones (crafts!) or make them from paper, but lately I like to use Doodle Buddy for this purpose. I don't need four different colored felts, papers, or markers to make this, and I can make it appear gradually with each sentence or story part we review:

More on Doodle Buddy tomorrow!

Read and Write for iPad

Last year I outlined the helpful features obtained by signing up for Read and Write for Google, a toolbar accessible in Chrome that brings to webpages and documents (particularly Google Docs) text to speech (always free) and text prediction, dictionary, and other features (via premium account or teacher subscription after 30 days).

With Read and Write for iPad, these features become accessible...on iPad. After going through the steps to activate your account and then teacher account (see the link in the first sentence of this post), install the app Read and Write, which is essentially a keyboard. The app will bring you through the steps of activating the keyboard in your Settings app, and it will then be available for you to toggle and bring it up (installed keyboards are displayed if you tap the globe icon in your keyboard on iPad, or tap and hold to choose from all your available keyboards--I also like Keedogo).

As with Read and Write for Google, the keyboard will be usable for all its features for 30 days; after that you will need to have signed up for a teacher account or purchased the features for students. Text to speech remains free "forever."

Although iOS has text to speech built in through the "Speak Screen" accessibility feature, having the keyboard available will make the option of having text read aloud more visual and "at your fingertips."

Read and Write was naturally designed for reading and language disabilities (and the developer touts benefits for English Language Learners as well), but text to speech is valuable for all students. The path to getting assistive technology accommodations in the hands of students that need it is not always clear, so it is helpful for as many educators as possible to know about available (and free) tools such as this!

You can use the toolbar when doing web research, to automatically make any webpage a listening comprehension activity, or just to give students an engaging break from the dulcet tones of our yammering voices. Text to speech is also a huge help (even for me) when proofreading; students tend not to catch their mistakes when reading their own writing, and also often hate to proofread! To learn more about emerging research on the benefits of text to speech technologies, see this helpful article.

Texthelp's guide to using the keyboard is available at this link.

Tinybop's The Human Body and the Learning Sandbox

A "sandbox" app is one that provides "open" play to some extent in a given context, Minecraft being a very popular sandbox application these days. Within a sandbox app, students can make choices and experience interactions with the context. Many great sandbox apps such as MarcoPolo Weather are relatively language-neutral, with little audio disrupting the activity, and for language intervention this presents a great context to elicit talk. Also notable in sandbox apps is the pace: you set it. In their post on sandboxes and play, Toca Boca notes that "Some sandbox games are set in vast city environments or large natural settings, others in more limited realms such as homes, doctors’ offices or hair salons."

Tinybop has been publishing apps that have these "limited" realms designed around specific curriculum topics (often but not exclusively related to STEM- Science, Technology, Engineering, Math- areas). Take The Human Body ($3.99 and well worth it as a specialized digital toy), which is "a working model of the body." Students can be guided to explore each system of the body and interact with it to see how it works. For example, the nervous system section allows you to drag different stimulants to the body (such as a stinging bee or feather) to see the effects of touch or pain, and smartly connects to the camera and microphone of the iPad to demonstrate the senses of vision and hearing.

Tinybop's working model allows you to explore the digestive system

I have benefited greatly by downloading the free handbooks that go with the Tinybop apps, as without these you might not know where all the interactions are hidden. I recommend printing the Human Body handbook, as within the app you have to access the adult dashboard to see it, and it's nice to have it on paper to the side so you can play with all the systems. You can download the handbook for this and other apps from Tinybop's website to make it easier to print.

The Human Body is quick to familiarize yourself with, and can be used for language-based activities when students are dealing with this curriculum material, such as:
-creating sentences about the cause-and-effect relationships within systems
-sorting vocabulary and concepts into categorical systems
-linking to real-world narrative, perhaps by taking photos and creating a book on our relationship with our body systems in Book Creator.
-pairing with a picture book related to the topic of anatomy and physiology for more narrative and expository instruction

I'll be taking a look at the other Tinybop apps in a future post or two!

Target conversational behaviors and scripts with Plotagon

Some technology tools that can provide an engaging model of conversational "moves" and skills have disappeared of late. The web tool xtranormal, which allowed you to type out dialogues that onscreen characters would speak, was wonderful for this, but is disappeared and is only reemerging as a complicated-looking software for Windows only. Likewise, Go Animate! was once school-friendly but has ported to a befuddling business-targeting subscription model. Toontastic of course is an excellent resource for making animations of social interactions, but an extra person or an affinity for making different voices really helps.

Enter Plotagon. This free app for iOS is simple to use and allows you to:
-sign in with Facebook or via an email account
-create (tap the Create tab, then characters) a base set of characters. I'd avoid the randomize button as it results in some folks with hair and clothing combos that would be a bit too distracting for your students- just tap the arrow and you'll be able to adjust face shape, skin color, accessories and such, and save and name your character.

Plotagon's character creator- you'll need to create at least two characters before you make an animated conversation

-create (tap the Create tab, then plots) an animation in a simple way. The plot creator works easily- just add a scene, tap to choose your location (a generous portion of free downloadable settings/places are available), and type in dialogue:

Note that all elements in the "script" interface on the left are editable. For example, tap the word "neutral" and you'll be able to give your character a different reaction or expression. It took me a bit to figure out that to delete a line of dialogue, you need to tap and sweep it to the left.

Once complete, you can view your movie as a preview by hitting the play button or viewing it full screen. Any work you do is saved in your account as a "draft," but you can finalize your creation by tapping Publish and Share and saving it to the Plotagon website. There is currently no way to download the video to your Photos app (so don't use students' real names in videos that are saved to the website), but once "published," you can share to others as a link.

Some ideas on using Plotagon in therapy and language interventions:
-I love using tools like this in conjunction with an internalizable strategy. In one group, we created a 5 Point Scale around Topic Management:

5-Off topic and Uncomfortable
4-Whopping Topic Change (a Social Thinking® Term)
3-Connected but confusing
2-Bridged Topic
1-Connected Comment

I created plot videos (see links above in the scale) to serve as examples- endlessly amusing to my students- and we discussed how they corresponded with the scale and character perspectives. We then worked to create other examples, particularly of 2s and 1s.

-Plotagon can serve as a context to model other strategies such as Story Grammar Marker's® 6 Second Story and Social Thinking's "Wondering Question" and "Add-A-Thought" expected behaviors in conversation.

-The app can also be used in conjunction with the Superflex® Curriculum by Social Thinking to model examples of Unthinkable and Thinkable moments.

-For students with more significant challenges, the app can be used to create and model scripts for various situations.

-Plotagon is also just a fun way to practice writing or create projects related to curriculum topics.