Internet Resources

My StoryMaker

My StoryMaker is an online interactive tool for teaching students the craft of developing a short story. My StoryMaker was developed by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. It can be found at http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/. On this site, students create their own online book that can be viewed online or printed out as a PDF file. Students begin by naming their story. They then select characters, settings, and various objects to insert into the pages of their story. As students develop their story, they can edit the type and location of objects on their pages. A text box is provided at the bottom of each page for writing the story. As characters are added to the story, the software provides an opportunity for students to change a character’s feelings, actions, or interactions. If the student places two characters on the screen, for example, a witch and a genie holding an apple, the student can click on the genie and the word “give,” and the program will write, “The genie gives the apple to the witch.” There is also a small character at the bottom right of the screen that provides guiding questions for students to help with the development of their stories. The software displays a numeric code for your story. You can access your story at a later time by visiting the site and entering your code. My StoryMaker will keep stories on file for up to 1 month.

ZooBurst

ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets students create their own three-dimensional (3D) pop-up books. ZooBurst books “live” online and can be experienced on a laptop computer or an iPad via the free ZooBurst mobile app. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of more than 10,000 free images and materials. ZooBurst authors can share books with readers using a simple hyperlink, and books can be embedded in any website or blog. Readers who have a camera installed on their computer can also experience any ZooBurst book in Augmented Reality. Using a standard webcam, they can hold up a special symbol to the webcam to watch as a 3D pop-up book “jumps” out of the paper and into the room around them. In addition, the Augmented Reality mode also allows readers the ability to interact with a book using simple gestures. For example, simply waving your hand in front of a book will allow you to turn its pages back and forth.

Narrative Norms

If you are working with 4- to 9-year-olds on narratives, here is more information on assessment. Phyllis Schneider, developer of the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument, now has data on her website: http://www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca/spa/enni. She has picture stories you can download. For two of the stories, you can check-off the story grammar elements the student uses in telling the stories. You can enter the score on an excel sheet on the website and get a standard score for story grammar level. If you transcribe the story the child told, you can calculate the total number of words, number of different words, and mean length of utterance (MLU) words, and enter this on an excel sheet to get standard scores.

Literacy Videos

Check out the videos on a wide variety of language/literacy topics on the “Children of the Code” website: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/

Brief video presentations by more than 100 noted researchers and educators in language literacy are available on topics such as neuroscience, cognitive science, language, social and emotional factors in reading, research and education policy, adult literacy, dyslexia and learning disability (LD), history of writing, and English orthography. The videos can be downloaded and embedded in PowerPoint presentations.

The Academic Word List (AWL)

The Common Core State Standards (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010) are being implemented in school districts in 45 states across the nation. Speech–language pathologists (SLPs) have a direct role in implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with students—some of whom have communication disorders—who struggle with language/literacy and in supporting classroom teachers. The CCSS emphasizes students’ development of a more academic style of language. Academic language used more complex syntax and uses vocabulary that is more abstract, less frequent and familiar, and generally structurally more complex (more syllables and multiple morphemes). As SLPs work with teachers to support students in meeting the CCSS, they will need to promote students’ vocabulary development. The AWL is a list of high-incidence and high-utility academic word families important for learners at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Teachers and SLPs should ensure that students learn the words on this list. The words selected for the AWL are words that occur frequently in a range of academic subjects, including the arts (including history, psychology, sociology, etc.), commerce (including economics, marketing, management, etc.), law and the sciences (including biology, computer science, mathematics, etc.).

The AWL was compiled by Coxhead (2000). To find these words, she analyzed academic journals, textbooks, course workbooks, lab manuals, and course notes. The list was compiled following an analysis of more than 3,500,000 words of text. The AWL consists of 570 word families that are not in the most frequent 2,000 words of English but that occur reasonably frequently over a very wide range of academic texts. These 570 words are grouped into 10 sublists that reflect word frequency and range. Sublist 1 contains the most common words in the AWL. Sublist 2 contains the next most common words, and so on. There are 60 families in each sublist, except for Sublist 10, which has 30. A word like analyze falls into Sublist 1, which contains the most frequent words, while the word adjacent falls into Sublist 10, which includes the least frequent (among this list of high-incidence and high-utility words). The AWL, organized into its 10 sublists can be found at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/publications/awlsublists1.pdf

An alphabetical list can be found at http://www.uefap.com/vocab/select/awl.htm

The 10 sublists contain the most frequent form of the word, more often a noun or verb form, although there may be one or more important related word forms. For example, the headword analyze would also include analyst, analytic, analytical, and analytically in the word family. The AWL is not restricted to a specific field of study. This high utility AWL does not contain technical words likely to appear in only one specialized field of study such as amortization, petroglyph, onomatopoeia, or cartilage. Two thirds of all academic English words come from Latin, French (through Latin), or Greek. Understandably, knowledge of the most high-incidence and high-utility academic words in English can significantly boost a student’s comprehension level of school-based reading material. Secondary students who are taught these high-utility academic words and routinely placed in contexts requiring their usage are likely to be able to master academic material with more confidence and efficiency, wasting less time and energy in guessing words or consulting dictionaries than those who are only equipped with the most basic 2,000 to 3,000 words that characterize ordinary conversation.

At a website sponsored by the English Language Centre at the University of Victoria, Canada, one can find exercises for older students to check their comprehension of these words: http://www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL/

This site contains 285 gap-fill exercises to review and recycle the general word families contained within the AWL. The exercises comprise groups of 10 sentences organized according to frequency of the words. Gap-fill exercises are a way to recycle vocabulary through different contexts and can be used to broaden the student’s understanding of the range of meaning of vocabulary. The online format of the exercises allows students to get immediate feedback on their answers. Students can work through five different exercises for each word family in the AWL. Many of these exercises include different derivations (parts of speech) for the given word. Students are encouraged to complete the exercises for a given level before proceeding to the next level. The sentences used in the gap-filling exercises are not theme related; there is no relationship among the sentences and hence no context for them. Consequently, the sentences are probably not helpful for teaching the words but could be useful as pre- and post-assessments.