Story Elements for SLPs!

As some of you may know, I am expecting my first baby (It's a BOY!) and will be taking some time off from work and blogging before and after his arrival. During that time, there will be several guest bloggers/SLPs that will be featured on my blog. I am so excited to share all of the amazing, informative posts they have come up with. I can not thank them all enough for taking the time to write these posts! Just another one of the many reasons I love being part of the SLP world. I hope you all enjoy reading everything over the next several weeks. Please feel free to leave comments and post questions.

The next guest post is written by Laura at All Y'all Need! Enjoy!

Hi! I'm Laura from All Y'all Need, and I'm so excited for Kristine! My first-born is a son, so I have a special place in my heart for baby boys!

There are three of us in All Y'all Need - me, an SLP, my librarian sister, and Kg teacher cousin. I have loved working with my sister and cousin, and they have had a huge influence on how I've extended literacy into speech/language therapy.

Why literacy? For me, it's ASHA and TEKS. I'm from Texas, and Texas didn't play in the Common Core sandbox. TEKS has made me aware that I really need to be using a LOT more literacy with my oral language students to help them out communication wise. And guess what? I found a few things I'm going to talk about in Common Core, too!

One strategy I have learned is story elements. Story elements are exactly what you think they are - the parts of the book (title, author, etc) and the story structure (beginning, middle, and end). I love to use books, so breaking them down into details is a natural step.

My sister introduced me to story element cards. Here's a picture of some examples:

I love story element cards in artic/language groups, and they can even be used for fluency. When I'm introducing a book, I pass around the cards according to goals. Language is pretty easy. If a student is working on "where" questions, he gets the Setting card. And so on.

For articulation, I look at sounds. For example, if a student is working on /k/, he would get the Character card and work on saying things like, "The old lady is the main character."

I have a few fluency students in my artic/language groups. I give the fluency students cards with sibilants to practice prolonging the sound. For example, the fluency student might get the Author card to practice saying, "The aaauuthor is Lucille Colandro".

Another benefit of story element cards is that students have written words to refer to. Instead of just telling them what they will need to know from the story, I'm able to give them a written reminder, and they still have to use good listening.

I can address artic/language goals through TEKS. TEKS requires parts of stories and discussions of those for K-5, the grades I serve. How great is that? Well, not so much if you're using Common Core. In looking at ELA-Literacy areas, K-5 all have standards related to reading stories, including:
* K-1 - retell familiar stories, including key details and identify character, setting and main events.
* 2 - ask and answer who, what, where, when, why and how questions
* 3-5 - describe characters and summarize text. For 5th, compare and contrast characters.

To address different needs and grades, I'm offering Story Elements in Color & B&W. The story elements come in color and B&W, and there are also color pages with supporting graphics. Story Elements is in our store on TpT, All Y'all Need. It is usually $1.50, but it will be free for this week, so grab it up and leave feedback!