Great Books Slps Will Love to Read: Porkenstein

Porkenstein by Kathryn Lasky is the great book of the week. It has great illustrations, useful for a variety of ages, and a really fun plotline that lends itself well to address a variety of goals.

Summary: Dr. Smart Pig, one of the 3 Little Pigs, is lonely and decides to invent a friend for Halloween. He makes mistakes and lots of funny creatures result in his search for a friend.

Tips for Goals:

Emotions & Body Language

• Elicit vocabulary for emotions while looking at the illustrations before reading.
• Ask why he felt this way after reading the page.

Friendship

• Do you think it is a good idea to invent a friend? Why or why not?
• What qualities did Dr. Smart Pig want in a friend?
• Would you want a friend like that?
• Did he get a friend with those qualities? How do you know?

Inferences

• Who were Dr. Smart Pig’s brothers?
• Why did he want a wolf-proof friend?
• Why did he think that inventing a friend wasn’t such a good idea after all?
• Why do you think Porkenstein ate so much?
• How did the stories about the enormous pig get started?
• Why was the wolf drooling outside Dr. Smart Pig’s house?
• Why did Dr. Smart Pig whisper when he saw the wolf?
• Why were there just boots outside the door? What happened to the wolf?
• Why did Dr. Smart Pig decide that Porkenstein was a true friend?

Describing Vocabulary:

famous, bigger, biggest, better, mysteriously, wrong, new, less, warm, rounded, corkscrew, starving, giant, enormous, incredible, huge, rumbling, scuffling, creaking, long, furry, loud, drooling, creaky, empty, lucky.

• Teach this vocabulary in context.
• What sense do you use?
• Name # more things that can be described this way.

Articulation:

L SOUNDS:

lonely, laboratory, shall, absolutely, squealed, chemicals, leaped, less, salt, later, tail, ceiling, I’ll, still, last, almost, life, table, like, jelly, swallowed, dribbling, all, including, long, miles, talking, incredible, drool, himself, meal, Halloween, drooling, little, old, lady, long, wolf, licked, fellow, listened, scuffling, rumbling, belch, silence, disbelief, smiled, believe, let’s, closer.

S/Z SOUNDS:

smart, famous, since, sadly, excited, his, friends, is, suddenly, was, absolutely, squealed, mixed, some, chemicals, raced, mysteriously, something, squirted, this, less, salt, hours, see, snout, corkscrew, wasn’t, has, wings, upside, ceiling, closer, still, last, almost, sunset, grunts, biggest, seen, starving, gasped, asked, swallowed, himself, such, jars, house, curtains, dust, bugs, it’s, Porkenstein, monster, stories, spread, soon, miles, enormous, said, just, sunset, pig’s, first, outside, fangs, ears, dress, whispered, brothers, voice, thighs, inside, listened, frozen, suddenly, scuffling, sound, silence, gasped, disbelief, smiled, boots, just, let’s, so, costumes.

R SOUNDS:

year, brother, tomorrow, ever, friends, inventor,  never, ran, laboratory, bigger, better, proof, beaker, raced, mysteriously, squirted, dear, cried, wrong, aquarium, incubator, warm, garden, hours, later, peered, rounded, corkscrew, closer, creature, doctor, try, closer, meter, threw, heard, grunts, another, there, starving, over, dribbling, more, smart, worried, after, jars, every, garbage,  curtains, doormat, rug, chair, neighbors, Porkenstein, monster, stories, spread, enormous, heard, incredible, drool, first, trick-or-treater, cry, furry, under, her, dress, whispered, fear, brothers, creaky, sure, frozen, rumbling, pair, where, better, true, forever, never, hungry, replied.

Do you like this book?

Great Books SLPs will Love to Read: 'They All Saw a Cat'

SLPs love to read great books! The featured book this week is 'They All Saw a Cat' by Brendan Wenzel.

Teaching kids to take the perspectives of others is a difficult task for all parents, and part of the work we do to help them become caring individuals.  Autistic children learn to be kind and caring easily enough, but seeing things from another’s perspective can be hard.

Pictures can help! It is a concrete way to start showing our students on the spectrum that people can look at things in a different way. The illustrations in this book can be used for a variety of age levels.

‘They All Saw a Cat’ by Brendan Wenzel is a great book for this! See if your library has it!

Tips for Mixed Groups:

Describing:

Students describe what each cat looks like and try to provide an adjective that best suits that cat.

Perspective Taking Skills:

Look at the pictures of the cat and talk about who saw the cat that way.

Did they all see the cat the same way?

Who saw the cat as scary?

Who saw the cat as furry?

Explaining:

How did each character see the cat? 
Why do you think they saw it that way?

Syntax:

Students working on past tense can say the repetitive refrains using ‘walked’ and ‘saw.’

Speech:

Have your articulation students fill in these repetitive words or phrases.

R- ‘whiskers, ears and paws’, ‘through the world’

S- ‘saw’

Until next time, enjoy!

Success over the Years: Practical Tips for Sharing (and Losing!)

Sharing is a social skill that we start teaching when children are as young as 1-2 years of age, but it continues over the years. To be successful in social interactions, we share more than just our toys and possessions. We share our stories, our thoughts, our ideas, and our feelings with others throughout our lives. 

Our language skills impact how we are able to share and interact. 

These practical tips for sharing will make your therapy more successful at building social language interaction skills while directly working on other speech/language goals.

Research shows that there are many factors that have an impact on sharing behavior: understanding of ownership, impulse control, and thinking about others’ perspectives, to name just a few.

How does this affect what we do in speech/language therapy and classrooms, especially with our autistic kids who are more likely to be bullied?

Tips for preschoolers to early elementary students

👀 Begin to teach sharing in activities with items that are not owned or possessed by either child, such as play sharing activities between two characters, working on pronouns his, hers, theirs.

👀 Practice sharing and turn-taking between children using similar objects that are not highly preferred by either, such as puzzles, and teach pronouns yours and mine.

👀 Have children request toys from each other during play rather than grabbing, teaching polite words such as "Can I?", please, and thank you.

👀 Have  children learn to wait for turns, teaching words like wait, short turn, and long turn.

👀 Start teaching perspective-taking skills by having them look at their peer and tell you how that child is feeling while waiting.

👀 Use a timer at first, if needed, but don’t stop there. Students need to learn to be able to share of their own accord rather than being told when to share (whether in words or timer use.)

👀 It is okay not to share everything! When we have new toys or very special items, we don’t always want to share. Just don’t bring them to school. At home, keep the special toys out of sight when friends come over or designate a nonshared toy for each sibling.

    👀 Read stories and discuss how we feel when someone grabs something, when we are waiting too long, or when we don’t get a turn.

      Helpful books for this age range, that directly discuss sharing, are shown in the picture.

Tips for later elementary students to teens

At older ages, students have learned to share objects. Our autistic students may actually share too much, according to research, accepting unfair trades and giving away more than they keep. Students in these age ranges may have problem sharing more abstract items, even though they can share common items perfectly well at this point.    

Sharing: Who Wins the Game?

This is often a problem, but there are some things that you can do.

👀 Begin with cooperative games where there are no losers and no winners. Teach concepts like having fun playing the game and co-operating.

👀 Use games where students don’t win, but they get to make predictions about what piece or color will win. They can even change their predictions along the way! Teach concepts such as first, then, next, and change.

👀 Play act sore losers and poor winners versus graceful ones with the game pieces. Talk about how that makes people feel and which type of player they would choose for the next game.

👀 Instead of congratulating and keeping track of the winners, give points for being kind/graceful winners or losers. Talk about if they enjoyed playing the game.

👀 Keep a chart of how many times your students politely played until the game was finished.

👀 Join the Facebook group ‘Looks Like Language to Me’ to download the free social rules story to use with your students.

Sharing: Telling a Story

Make sure that your students are able to share personal narratives. You may be surprised at who has problems with this!

👀 Students who can only tell a fact about their weekend, rather than a cohesive story, may have problems having age-appropriate conversations with peers.

👀 Students who have problems clearly and quickly retelling a plot of a tv show, movie, or video game will be left out of these conversations.

👀 Students who aren’t able to share what they liked or disliked, and why, may not be able to actively participate in peer conversations about a movie, game or tv show.

👀 For working on narratives, learn about Story Grammar and adjust the ideas to the age level of your students.

Sharing: Feelings

Students who have problems labeling and expressing their own feelings are likely to not understand what to say or do when peers reach out to them in conversation about a problem they are having.

Students who are both impulsive and unable to verbally share their feelings are also likely to be the students who disrupt games with physical reactions like storming out or throwing the game on the floor. Try the tips listed above as they may not have been able to learn this skill when younger.

Sharing Equally- or Being Fair

As mentioned before, autistic students are more likely to just be compliant and overshare, or accept less than their fair share, which can lead to being bullied.

This can cause difficulties for resolving conflicts in middle and high school, where students often need to work in groups. Having the language to negotiate and stand up for ourselves is a functional skill that may need to be directly worked on.

Do your students have this problem?

Want to read more?

Helpful Articles

Sharing skills, and what we are sharing, change over the years, but are an ever present part of social interactions over a lifetime. The research is vast, but here are a few helpful articles to check out.

Mine or Yours? Development of Sharing in Toddlers in Relation to Ownership Understanding

This article has a great overview of some research on sharing and gives insight on the development of sharing skills.

Young Brains Lack Skills for Sharing

This quick read gives information about neurological skills needed for sharing.

Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Share Fairly and Reciprocally?

An in-depth research article that cites information about the possible roles of many neurological skills in sharing, including Theory Of Mind.

Research finds kids share when it's done by choice.

Another quick read that tells us that we need to teach children to make choices to share rather than making them share.