Here's The Story, of a Man Named Braidy!

This Summer I took a training on a wonderful program called Story Grammar Marker, or SGM. SGM is a program that helps children with comprehension, retelling, and expressive language. I am using SGM for my inquiry project this year. I want to know how using this program will help my language impaired students (with a focus on first graders).

Meet Braidy (named appropriately because he is a giant braid!) The big green puff ball at the top represents the characters, the star represents the setting, the shoe represents the "kick off" or event that starts the story, the heart represents feelings, the beads represent events in the story, and the bow represents the wrap up, or story ending.

I wanted to share what I have done so far with Braidy. The past few weeks, my target group has been working on a story called, The Lion and The Little Red Bird. After we read the story the first day, I had the students take turns retelling the story. I recorded them on my iPad. Oh My! What a mess these retellings were! Out of order events, using "he" instead of character names, leaving out major evens in the story.... you name it! But that was my baseline... so it's all good! :)

Today, we re-read the story and filled out my magnetic Braidy with information on the white board as a group. Here is what we came up with:

After we completed the information as a group, I had the students retell me the story again. I allowed them to use the actual Braidy and the white board as a reference. They did fantastic!! I was so pleased with how much more detail and order they used when retelling the story! I can't wait to use this with each story we read!
If you want more information on the Story Grammar Marker, visit the website at: Story Grammar Marker