Caroline's Corner LEARNING MAGIC

The Latest From Caroline

Here is a chance to spend time with Dr. Caroline Musselwhite, and get tips and new resources to use in conjunction with the R.A.P.S. #1 CD. The latest set from Caroline's Corner brings you three new extension activity ideas relating to RAPS! See the descriptions below for Pizza Spinoff Stories!!, Social Stories: At The Party!!, and Listen To List: Describe Settings. Download and try out all three!

P.S. Caroline has issued a special challenge for the second tip in this set, Social Stories: At The Party!! See details below!

If you haven't already downloaded the first five tips, see Pizza Mind Reader, Building An Ear Print, Going to Burger King, RAPS Planning Form, and Re-Doing Spinoff Stories, and download them as well. We are excited to bring you these activities! Look for more tips and resources here in Caroline's Corner throughout the year.

Meet The Author

For those of you who don't know Caroline yet, you are missing a real pleasure! Dr. Caroline Musselwhite is an assistive technology specialist with more than 25 years of experience working in the areas of AAC and literacy. She has written many textbooks and "how-to" books and has authored a number of software programs. She has presented thousands of workshops, locally, nationally and internationally.

Caroline Musselwhite is available to do a workshop on strategies for using RAPS stories and software to support literacy AND language. She can also visit classrooms in your district to model best practice with YOUR students. If you are interested, contact her through e-mail (best option, as she travels often!): or by snail mail:

Dr. Caroline Musselwhite

916 West Castillo Drive

Litchfield Park, AZ 85340

RAPS Tips and Resources

These resources are either .zip or PDF format. See the FAQ information on downloading and saving PDF files section for information on downloading and saving PDF files. For help in downloading and extracting .zip files, download a PDF file right here with detailed instructions.

Pizza Mind Reader

For this phonics activity, students are given a sentence with a missing word. They are provided with various hints to help them attend to:

initial sounds (onsets) printed
initial sounds (onsets) spoken
rhyming
length of word

This should be a short, fun activity, with students' names included in the guessing game. Students with disabilities can eye point to symbols or words.

Building An Ear Print

It is very helpful to develop an 'ear print' for the text of a story. Nellie Edge (2002, www.nellieedge.com ) refers to this as 'memory reading' or 'magical memory reading.' Each of the three stories on RAPS CD # 1 includes a songboard, and symbols for retelling the story through song. However, this case example describes why you may want to build an 'ear print' for the story language by singing the song first!!

Enjoy!

Going to Burger King

This case example describes how one class created their own story, after multiple readings and retellings of the story, 'Looking Great.'

The writeup includes a description of the students, environment, task, and tools. Note especially the 'how-to' section, describing step-by-step the strategies and scaffolding used to support the class in creating their story.

We hope that you can use this sample task, with YOUR students, in your environment, and selecting the tools that will provide just the right amount of support!

RAPS Planning Form

Organization is always a challenge in a busy classroom. This form helps teachers and therapists plan weekly activities, while ensuring that the team considers factors such as:

- which activities must take place EVERY day to support students in their literacy development

- adaptations for activities, to meet the needs of a range of students

Sample activities in each category are suggested.

Re-Doing Spinoff Stories

Each RAPS unit includes four "easy stories" or "spinoff stories". These are very simple stories, such as stories developed using a list of nouns, verbs, adjectives, or prepositions.

These stories are ideal vehicles for redoing using photos of YOUR students! In addition, students can work as a team to add pages to an existing story and / or add their own story illustrations.

If you develop great stories, please share them with us!

Pizza Spinoff Stories!!

Written by: Brooke Lucero, Rachel Morris, Caroline Musselwhite, Laurel Richardson, and Katy Spence

These stories were written on a Friday afternoon after school by a very creative team from Buckeye Elementary School in Arizona. They are exemplars of stories that can be written to provide additional reading opportunities to support a 'core story' (in this case, Pizza Today).

Note that illustrations for these stories can include: clip art (see "Queasy")

photos of objects
photos of your students
symbols such as Picture Communication Symbols www.mayer-johnson.com

There are five spin-off stories in a PDF file. One of them, Pizza Yum, is all ready to go as a PowerPoint presentation, complete with photo illustrations. To make sure you get both files in one download, they are in a single folder that downloads in compressed (.zip) format.

Social Stories: At The Party!!

This story was written by Linda Tratechaud, a speech-language pathologist who is part of a highly creative and innovative team at Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida. This is an extension activity to the RAPS story, "Looking Great". This story has dual purposes, supporting both social and literacy development. The story uses elements of the original story:

similar rhythm to "Looking Great"
multiple repeated lines (lines 1, 2, & 4 are the same on each page)
line 3 presents a slot-filler
graphic supports the slot in line 3

I am looking for a fun illustration of this story! If I select your illustrated story, you will receive your choice of one of my CDs. Download the story for details!

Listen To List: Describe "Settings"

This resource is a detailed lesson plan. The overall goal is to help readers learn to listen to a story and look at graphics so that they can describe a setting in a book.

The story used in this lesson is Pizza Places, the "nouns" story from the Pizza Today set of RAPS.

The lesson plan includes step by step instructions, suggestions, and ideas.

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