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Fives Booklet
Fives Booklet
Fives Booklet
Take for example, the Forces and Movement activity from the BBC Schools Science
Clips website. In this activity, students follow steps to interact with "objects" onscreen
in order to demonstrate concepts around forces and movement. Clearly, this is a
complex activity whose context fits right in with early-middle elementary science
curriculum. However, when the task is analyzed, this activity also is quite language-
based, with a number of
embedded skills and targets
appropriate for a language
session. Many students
activity target language goals specific to the students' Individualized Education Plans?
A resource that meets all these criteria is The Jamestown Online Adventure by History
Globe. While many students may have missed key details of the story of the early
settlers when it was presented auditorily or through readings in their classroom, this
activity allows them to make decisions from the colonists' point of view and
"experience" the results.
(see Old El Paso’s El Tacodor Games). That said, some software, apps, or web
subscriptions are definitely worth paying for, even more so if you can secure a grant
Much of what this booklet referrs to are resouces that could be used in students in
direct therapy, rather than drill-and-practice activities better relegated to completion
in the classroom or with a paraprofessional. To clarify what I mean by direct
therapy, I am referring to what would be on the sections of the Individualized
Education Plan that outline the time you will spend conducting or facilitating therapy
with the student, whether individually or in a group. This is an important distinction to
make, because there are certain technology resources that would be great to set up
as part of a student’s program, perhaps under your consultation services, but would
not make much sense to use in direct therapy (Some examples of these quiz-based
resources include Earobics or certain commercial flashcard-like programs,often on
CD-ROM). If the student can guide him/herself through the activity without your
This is where the I in FIVES- Interactive- can help us to make good technology-based
choices for our direct therapy. True interactive resources differ from quiz-based
technology in that students are given more room to make choices, solve problems,
and to make mistakes that your scaffolding will help prevent or review, so that it is a
richer learning experience. Interactive resources also tend to be more deeply rooted
in an educationally useful context, and ideally move at a pace that allows you as a
clinician to “get a word in”- whether to model language, question, extend, and of
course to provide a pre- or post- activity that emphasizes language targets. Let’s take,
for example a resource that is indeed Free, Interactive, Visual, Educationally relevant,
and Speechie- Earth Sun and Moon- An Interactive Learning Experience.
So what about the V, those visual elements that can be so critical for our students who
spend a good deal of time in classrooms missing key points of auditory instruction?
It’s clear that resources such as Earth Sun and Moon- An Interactive Learning
Experience are not only interactive but highly visual. Technology is a great tool for
making abstract curriculum elements visual for our students. It also provides visual
supports that assist us in scaffolding students’ production of all those things we put on
Technology can also be a good tool for us to use to create materials for students that
bring challenging concepts into reach. With the advent of Web 2.0- the “Read/Write
Web” in which we don’t merely read webpages but can actually publish to them with
ease- many creation tools are at our fingertips! Some of these might be too
complicated to expect a student to use, but we can certainly navigate them, with a
little practice. One good example of this type of creation resource is Pixton, an online
comic creator. Pixton is in the vein of Kerpoof, but gives you much more leeway in
customizing your comic to emphasize body language, facial expressions and other
aspects that might be useful in a pragmatic language/social thinking skills group. I
recently used Pixton to create a set of comics to introduce the concepts of expected
and unexpected group behaviors (See Michelle Garcia Winner’s work) to a new
group of students. My goal was to use the visuals to help the students verbalize what
they saw in the pictures, which would then serve as a working list of expected
behaviors for our group. See Appendix II for a sample of the comics we discussed.
Isolating the specific behaviors depicted was challenging for these students, and they
did indeed benefit from cues such as “Think about his word balloon, then look at
hers.” In the end, however, we did have a nice list that came from more of a
constructivist activity than if I had just told the kids what I expected, and more of a
visual (and fun) activity than if we had just generated them verbally. If you are
This becomes easier when we become familiar with the state and/or district academic
standards, usually available online (the pretty-good MA DOE website is one
example). These standards are broad and can be overwhelming, but like everything,
we can take them a bit at a time. I always find it striking how language-based the
standards are; IEP objectives could not only be aligned with state standards, in many
cases you could use the actual standard as an objective!
Below is a brief (I could go on and on about this) list of standards from my district
(Newton, MA) and state, linked to fun activities that are language-enhancing and
relevant to the standard.
Grade 3 Understands that land and weather affected Wampanoag, Pilgrim and
colonial food, housing, clothing, celebration and activities
This is a broad and limited list, but gives us a frame of reference to look at a resource
and see how it might be considered Speechie. One of my favorites is the BBC’s What
is Weather?. This fun site allows students to view humorous animations describing all
the elements of weather (temperature, precipitation, etc) and then complete
interactive activities that apply the presented information. Clearly, weather is right on
target in terms of being educationally relevant, but bringing the clinician into the
equation is what makes this resource Speechie. Some things the therapist can do to
elicit skills include:
-Asking the student to verbally describe what they saw in each of the (basically
wordless) animations, to bring about a definition of each weather term.
-Modeling and eliciting complex sentences about the animations and activities
“Ohhhh, I see, WHEN the wind was moderate...”
-Moderating turn-taking and sharing elements if the student is completing the activity
with a peer.
In this portion of the activity, students review weather information about a country,
then guess what sporting activities you could do there in a given season.
Conclusion
The FIVES criteria is just one tool clinicians can use in analyzing and integrating
technology resources into your therapies. For more examples of resources that meet
these criteria, follow me on my blog, SpeechTechie.
Free? “Featured Movie” and “Movie of Week” (Brainpop Jr.) are free,
others w/school or indvidual subscription.
Interactive? Quizzes for each movie, Jr. site has more interactives such as
games and writing activities.
Educationally Directly aligns with state standards (with pages showing exactly
Relevant? how, and directing users toward movies that address specific
standards by state).
Free? Completely
Free? Completely.
Free? Completely
Free? Completely
References
Ehren, B.J. (2000). Maintaining a therapeutic focus and sharing responsibility for
student success: keys to in-classroom speech-language services. Language,