WRiTE BRAiN BOOKS & The SLP
It’s back to school again!!! Everyone loves starting the new school year off organized, with goals written and methods planned. I am always adding to my “tool box” of treatment strategies to work with my clients as well as for suggestions to the graduate students I teach and supervise. When I was introduced to Meredith Scott Lynn and her AMAZING company, Write Brain Books, www.writebrainbooks.com, I was so inspired. WRiTE BRAiN was originally designed as a writing curriculum for teachers, so when Meredith asked me to author a supplement for the students with learning differences (and many times difficulties), to align with each of the leveled curriculums, I was honored.
ALL pediatric SLP’s will love the books, story mats and story cards offered in the world of WRiTE BRAiN—they have interesting, eclectic characters with engaging pictures (created by illustrators from the renowned Academy of Art University, San Fransisco). You will find a multitude of ways you can use the product line to easily target your clients’ goals and creating individualized treatment programs with these materials is really so much fun! The interactive and digital Book Builder program on the website will give your clients the experience of actually authoring their own books—the perfect reward once goal achievement has been met. First, they’ll get a link to the vibrant digital version of their original storybook, a link they and you can share with anyone. Email it to a loved one or to their school principal. Then, they can order a professionally published hardcover copy, shiny dust jacket and all!
Here are some suggestions:
WRiTE BRAiN BOOKS
are illustrated wordless books with lines on every page for any young author to pen his or her own narratives. I have always gravitated towards using picture books in my therapy practice and I really appreciate that the lines are already drawn in these.
The goals that can be targeted with such a design are limitless—cohesive sentences/cause and effect statements/problem solving/hypothesizing…etc.
Curriculum Guides
were originally created for the classroom teacher to implement, but the week-to-week lesson goals will work for the SLP who sees her students in small groups or who pushes in to the classroom on a weekly basis. You can choose to follow the curriculum as is or pick out the pertinent lessons (and related materials) that will most benefit your students. Some SLP’s just starting out may really appreciate the lessons already thought out. At the Atlas School for Autism (where I am the Clinical Coordinator) our SLP and classroom teacher work together to implement the curriculum and tweak it, when necessary.
Story Mats
capture the essence of each book in one big picture and were a BIG HIT at ASHA last year! They can be used in a variety of ways —to either complement the use of the corresponding book or on their own. Some expressive language goals facilitated with these mats are: story recall/main idea/verb tenses/temporal & ordinal concepts and obviously, all pre-narrative and narrative goals you may have. You can also have your students take it home with them—which is such a great way to foster generalization of these skills and “show off” to mom and dad.
Story Cards
capture a scene from its’ corresponding book and can be used alone or in conjunction with the story. Sometimes character development and dialogue are easier to create with one, isolated image. Higher level thinking skills can be targeted with these as well—encouraging your students to consider what the character is thinking and feeling or what could have possibly happened “before” the scene and what may happen “after” are always fun tasks.
This post was a brief overview and I am excited to post more ways (in the future) in which these products will inspire you and engage your clients.
