The Joseph Robert Shaw Foundation

Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury

Art and Agency

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A few weeks ago, I posted about Joey’s monster. 

Joey’s mother recently sent me this picture, and I teared up. Joey’s great-aunt made him gloves with his monster on them. I was surprised by my tears. After all, it had just been an art project, right?

Art is a way we all express ourselves, though (like so much of communication) it involves motor planning and motor control. As children move through development, their art becomes more intentional. They understand the choices and control they can make as they work, and their art is a true expression of themselves. [Read more…]

The Power of Names

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I opened the door to Joey’s house and found him waiting for me at his device. He looked at me, grinned, turned back to his computer, and said “Hi Miss Ann-Bailey. My name is Joey.” I can’t tell you how exciting it was to hear him say my name – and based on the grin on his face, it seemed like he was pretty excited to say it too.

I hadn’t thought much about the need to add names to Joey’s device. It didn’t seem to be such a priority, considering the need for other highly used words. So I was surprised at how natural it made Joey’s conversation when he suddenly had access to our names. [Read more…]

Joey’s Insights

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Moments of Joey sharing his thoughts.

Joey and I were enjoying the Ninja Red Riding Hood and Three Ninja Pigs books, and so I thought I’d introduce another spin on the Red Riding Hood tale. Joey seemed excited at first, but shortly after beginning the book – The Cat, The Dog, Little Red, The Exploding Eggs, The Wolf, and Grandma, it was clear that this story was not nearly as interesting to him as the Ninja series. This book, by Diane Fox, tells the Red Riding Hood story from the perspective of a cat and a dog arguing over the story. The cat is trying to read the story, while the dog interrupts with questions and silly assumptions. Unfortunately, as we read, I realized this story has an older sense of humor than Joey is interested in.  [Read more…]

Learning High Frequency Words

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Now that Joey is in kindergarten, it is time for him to begin to learn to recognize some high frequency or sight words. Schools I’ve worked in previously have liked for kindergarten students to know about 25 of these common words by the end of the year. After watching Joey confidently learn his letters and letter sounds, I started to feel that Joey was ready for this next step this summer. I introduced them slowly at first, but now I am working on a new one each week.

When I taught kindergarten and first grade, we would learn one of these words in connection with a book or poem we were reading. We would first read the text, then identify the smaller word within the text. We’d break the word up into pieces, talk about what we notice about the word, and decide where it should go on our classroom word wall. We would clap the word, snap the word, cheer the word, and put it up on our wall where we would then practice it every day for a week. We knew those words. We’d write the word on a sentence strip inside a familiar poem or song we all knew, and we’d put that into a reading center that we could practice putting in order. [Read more…]

Learning to Speak in Phrases

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One of our goals for Joey is to speak in multi-word phrases. All children begin with single words, and then over time develop two to three word phrases, before moving on to full sentences. Of course, all children are immersed in examples of how we use multi-word phrases and sentences throughout the day. Although Joey hears oral examples of how to put words together into sentences, it is rare he is able to watch people model using multi-word phrases on a device. Those of us who use the device with him take time to model these phrases, but there is no way to compare our modeling to the total immersion of a typically developing child. [Read more…]

Saturday Serenade

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Test post for Saturday Serenades https://www.musichealsglennjan.com/saturday-serenades

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