#071:Literacy-Based Therapy Plans for Early Elementary

Marisha: Now let's dive into some ideas for early elementary. So, we have three students in this group and we've got Angelina, Draco and Gregory. So Angelina is working on answering who and what questions and following two to three direct step directions with those embedded concepts. So she struggles with her basic concepts and then all of the students have story retell goals and they are being scored on a rubric with their story grammar. So we're looking at them including story grammar elements but also producing grammatically correct sentences and all of that good stuff.
Draco is also working on describing a picture and being able to provide at least four different details like the category, the function, all of that. And then he's also working on answering questions. So a lot of these students have overlap. They're all working on comprehension questions and they all have... Well, Draco has a describing goal and Gregory is not quite at the describing level but he's working on stating the functions of an object. So, that's what we've got and then we are planning a sweet smell of roses for this group.
So let's go ahead and dive into the planner for a sweet smell of roses and then just to recap we're working on WH questions, two to three step directions, object functions, describing and story retell. So for this group, I would definitely like to start with a book walk and then that will give me an idea of what the students know and how much additional support I need to give them. So I have let's see, here's all of my documents for this group. So again, I would use add puzzle to grab the video of the book and then it's just a couple minutes long. And this is a story about two sisters who get to hear Martin Luther King speak. So it's a cool history lesson for our students and just taking the perspective and imagining ourselves back then. So sweet video, a nice sweet short story as well.
So we would just open up that video and then we'd scroll through, we'd look at the cover, maybe look at some of the pictures and then I would go into the story grammar organizer for this story. So it's a Google slides version of it and it has movable icons but for the first step in the framework I would simply have the student... It's more of an influencing activity and then again this gives me an idea of how much background knowledge they have on the topic. Because if they don't have any background knowledge they're really going to struggle. But it gives me a really good baseline. Can they guess who the story is about, what the problem is, where it happens, all of that good stuff. So I'll just get a feel for this and if it's a big struggle for our students then I would take a step back and I would include a virtual field trip.
But just to recap, we do a book walk, fill in the graphic organizer to guess what the story's going to be about and we can revisit that later. And if the students need additional support we'll do a virtual field trip. And I found another video on Ed Puzzle about Martin Luther King that just gives a little bit more background information. And we might do a KWL chart so know what they know what they want to learn and then at the end we can revisit what they learned. I just fold a piece of paper into three or just draw two lines down a piece of paper to make three sections and we just start filling that in and we'll continue to fill that in as we do the virtual field trip and learn a little bit more about Martin Luther King or anything else that seems necessary given how they perform with that pre-story knowledge activiation activity.
Then the second step is super easy. We just dive in and actually read the story or if we're using the video we just get to watch it. And I do my best just to go through that and I don't stop too terribly often. We just get to soak in the video and then we'll go back and revisit it as needed.
And then for the comprehension we have, just like we did for the preschoolers, we have a bunch of comprehension questions and these students they're just working on general comprehension so I would include literal and inferential questions. And I would start by revisiting the story grammar organizer as well so we would just open up that Google slide again with the icons for all of the different elements in the story and we would fill it in based on what we actually write in the story. And we might revisit what we guessed or we might just skip that depending on how close they were and then just use the interactive icons to fill that in. Or if they're at a higher level I would just ask them, "Who was the story about? When did it happen? Where did it happen?" And just have them verbally tell me those things.
And the cool thing about this framework is that it's very language rich and we would be able to whether they're working, if they have grammar goals I can recast, I can provide models and I'm being very strategic in targeting those goals. I can be very strategic and introducing vocabulary words. We didn't have specific vocabulary word goals here necessarily, it's more object functions and describing, but those are all things that we can easily embed throughout the unit. So I would use a combination of if I'm in person doing in-person therapy I would just print out my multiple choice question cards so that the students have visual support and if they're higher level I would just pull my list of literal and inferential questions and start a conversation around those. And then another thing that I would do if I was doing this virtually we have no print versions and then also boom card versions of these question decks so those would just be easy to pull up and have it be a little bit more interactive than just pulling up a list of questions on a PDF.
So that's how that works and then for step four where we actually dive into the skills. We've done a lot with their skills already. We've already worked on comprehension questions. We've already done some work with story retell. So we'll just focus in on following two to three step directions and then also how to work on object functions and describing which I think would be a really great opportunity for a vocabulary journal.
So with all of these skills I would want to make sure that I take time to teach initially. So if the student is working on following directions I would pull up the skill pack for that and then it would have a visual that introduces the skill to the student. And then depending on my diagnosis of where the student needs support for following directions I would teach them strategies, which we also have visual support cards for that. And then another option would be to if they are missing some of the vocabulary, like I said before a lot of our students struggle with basic concepts which impact their ability to follow those directions or a syntax issue. So whatever the student needs support with, we don't know based on this hypothetical group but I would just make sure to pull that visual, introduce that skill, give them a little bit of structured practice and then move into embedded practice within our activities as quickly as possible.
So with following directions, I can just make sure to provide that student with directions in the context of that activity. And then sometimes we might do a craft or if we're making the parallel story I might have them help me get the supplies for that. So there's just different options there but I tend to have it be more contextualized so that's how I would work on that.
And then for the vocabulary journal, I used to just have students do this on paper but I've really, really been enjoying using Google slides for this. So I'll give you a quick example of how I put that together so let's see. So I just put together a Google slide and I just make a set like I make one Google slide document for each student and I can just pull in their visuals too if I'm doing virtual therapy so we have easy access to them. But for the vocabulary journals, like for this example I don't have an object function one in here but I just have a page for some of the most common categories and object functions for that type of vocabulary goal.
And then we write in the definition, we find exemplars and non exemplars, and then we build on that page and the student can just type in examples that they find or they can take screenshots of the book and add in the screenshots to their page. And it's a living, breathing document or journal. We are continually adding to like, if we're working on animals as the category we'll continue to add to that journal and add in examples. And if we read Turkey Trouble first we'll add in some of the animals and then if we read The Mitten next then we'll add in the animals from that story. And it's a really cool way to continue building on vocabulary.
And then I'll give some examples of what that looks like with older students in the future units. And then one other thing that I wanted to share, just an idea. So, if we're working on describing we can pull in a picture, we can take some screenshots from the book, pull them into Google sites and have the students work together to describe that picture. And it's a really cool way so it's a nice way to work on a describing goal but we can also use it for students who are working on creating sentences. And for the student who's working on following directions we can give them a direction to help them so that they can help fill in that organizer as well.
So that's what we've got for step four and then first step five the parallel story I would open up that graphic organizer again and quickly just fill that in with our own version of the story. So maybe they got to see someone famous speak or maybe they want to change the story to what it would have been like if they heard Martin Luther King speak. There's just a lot of different options there. The students, it's fascinating how creative they get. So, that's what I would do there. We would just fill in the organizer, work as a group to come up with a different version of the story and then we would create some Google slides and add in some texts and find Google images or whatnot to finish up that parallel story. And that's what we've got for our early elementary group.