http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10876 Here's the link for that book. I haven't started it yet, because it's just not practical to do it on top of the language work we're doing. (FFC, synonyms, main idea/details, etc.) I've got the PTOMG printed out, so I can look through it and see. It uses lots of pictures and fictional stories, so it's a logical thing to extend it to narratives. I don't know. Ds already has the ability to do a chop chop retelling of a book. Like last night, he ran through the plot of a Mercy Watson book while explaining to dh why he shouldn't have to read the print copy. (He had done the audiobook already.) So that was interesting to me, because it told me there are certain components that are there in his narrative ability. Like when it's slower, when the model is repeated many times, when he's engaged, he's at least able to pick out the main points of the plot. He used to do more elaborate narratives, but they were usually scripted (repeating chunks from sources) and with a funky voice. So there's also a lot of gap with what's not happening, but some of the pieces are there. Just to say did you notice there were characters and a setting and plot points and blah blah, I think ds is already there. We've done that stuff. Well I'll keep thinking. I don't know if that would somehow converge, to merge the PTOMG and narrative or even just lit sources. It could be really charming. Maybe the tm includes book lists and I hadn't noticed them. That, to me, is the thing. I don't necessarily need more tools. Sometimes I need to do more with what I've already got. After all, narration itself is very simple in some ways and costs nothing.

I didn't mean to jump this. I think you're right, but this is the harder win. What I'd like to see is a natural convergence of social thinking and improvement in narrative. Just extrapolating here, but you could actually have a progression where you merged the Practical Theory of Mind Games and development of narrative. You could do the game for the lesson, build the concept, then generalize it to a narrative. It could work.

This. Definitely. And nicely, elegantly put. It's just obvious when you say it that way. Good point.

Sure would be handy if there was a way to target the medial prefrontal cortex with metronome work. I have no clue what I'm talking about, just saying. It ought to work. If we can bump interoception (temporarily) by targeting that part of the brain (mindfulness ,etc.), then we ought to be able to target the mPFC and get more development there. I don't know what impact V/V would have. I'm not too hot at it myself. Now that's never stopped me from doing things with my kids that THEY learn how to do, lol. I'm just saying I really don't have a gut sense there of yeah V/V techniques, when more natural to the student, would improve his engagement in episodes. It stands to reason, but I don't know. Again though, if that is a piece that is missing, it's something we could develop BEFORE we go working on oral narratives. It would be a more foundational skill. Well that and I have a person who can actually do it. Since it's not a hot area for me (and the worker isn't very expensive), it's something where I could use the scholarship and get that piece done. It's something I've been tossing around, and I wasn't sure why. I don't know if it would actually help or not.

The article says language affects AM but that AM issues go beyond language. IE. I can't just work on language and assume the narratives will come. Talks about sense of self in oddities of AM. Not sure what in the world you would do about that. Like who cares, differences, are fine, whatever. I don't know, at some point I'm about functional. Maybe I'm not? I just think that sense of self thing is a pit you could wallow in forever. I'm not sure you're going to build that self-awareness a ton, since it seems to be a core deficit. Like saying you wished salmon would swim in dish soap...

Reading through geodob's article here. They're talking about specificity affecting episodic memory. Maybe that is why it's SO popular to do V/V (verbalizing and visualizing) with these kids? V/V would slow them down and help them build specificity in an episode. Gander Publishing is releasing a history text sequence trying to do precisely that. And yes, my understanding of history is disturbingly vague, lol. It was on the top of the page, that guy who did such and such won, etc. Nuts, I even give directions like that. (You take the big road out till you hit the exit and go north...) No names, nothing. So I think they're onto something there. If the mPFC is affected, we ought to be able to target it, to get more development there. The article explores the *content* of ASD narratives vs. TD. So maybe using books/stories with animals would be a better starting point? And leave out the social thinking? And do more with semantic content (ie. the non-fiction narratives I was talking about)... Oh my, NOW we're having lightbulb moments... One, it's talking about theory of mind and suggesting working on that could improve AM (autobiographical memory). So fine, let's do that. I got the Practical Games for Theory of Mind from Linguisystems and it looks like the most thorough thing I've seen, very excited. Just too busy to start right now. Maybe soon. I really think it could be lightbulb though and something that could carry over to narratives, sure. And then thing two, even BIGGER, the article talks about FUTURE thought and building mental events. On a level, that's so easy to do and so obvious, and yet it's also, in effect, building the narrative. You would pre-mentalize the narrative, live the narrative, then retell the narrative. And that's probably something Lecka's ds is already getting through his ABA, through school. We would call it making hooks. At a more sophisticated level, it's putting a narrative sequence or a moral onto something, like when the teacher says what is the cycle of apostasy with the people of Israel and then you read the story and retell the story onto that backdrop. That wouldn't be an appropriate beginning narrative and would have been inappropriate for a young child, but for LATER, for a student who is ready to ANALYZE, that's appropriate. That's our WTM stages (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric). We don't ask them to analyze when they can't even do the basic skills. Or we do. Some people think you should do all the skill levels at once, lol. But at least we can say those aren't THE SAME.

This article looks really good! I'm going to have to pour over it. I might have to reread it when I feel better. Yes, this has been my theory, that cause of the deficits in episodic memory are also affecting the dc's ability to retell narratives. Take, for instance, my complete and utter disdain and lack of interest in history. History is either semantic bits (how my ds approaches it, this tank's name was such and such, it could shoot this far, etc.) OR engaging episodic memory of social narratives, people who had feelings and interrelated for reasons. So to me, yes, nurturing episodic memory OUGHT to make the steps of narratives seem more logical, meaningful and connected and lead to a cohesive gestalt. The RDI interviewer said my ds has *some* basic episodic memory. I think this could be developed more, and I think along with language work it would lead to cohesive, logical narratives that are brief and then expanded. THAT to me makes sense. Think about the irony too, that SGM focuses on fictional narratives at the lower level, later adding their non-fiction expansion (which I really like btw, REALLY like), totally neglecting the possibility that ASD students will be very strong in non-fiction narratives and weaker in fictional. Ie. the worker could use the materials and get non-fiction narratives going and then work backward to fiction. I don't know, I just keep thinking. The whole bandwagon thing, where they just say here's a tool and they neglect to ask whether it reflects any actual experience with autism, any research into autism, really bugs me. I have time here, with my ds, with thoughtfulness, to get somewhere good. I definitely need to go watch the NDT videos. That lady at least was working a lot with autism. I think it's striking that someone working with autism a lot more didn't make her tool linear and fill it with abstract symbols. She made the tool flexible, rearrangeable, visualizable (something they could mentally manipulate and rearrange) and grouped logically with color, location, and shape. To me, NDT as a tool feels natural and fits more how I THINK. If you actually care about how the student thinks, if the student is a non-traditional thinker and not going to find any old tool or methodology natural, then that ought to matter. To me there are parts of NDT that are brilliant, like the way she brings in extra bubbles, of the same color, to pair with and develop the main bubble and the ability to write on the bubbles. It's that expansion gig I was talking about, with ability to add dialogue, etc. SGM never seems to care about this, because it wouldn't be a challenge for dyslexic students.

Lecka, cumulative narrative chunking is the same thing Moreau puts in all the other materials. Well this is my 3rd day of fevers and I'm very grouchy. I don't know if it's turning to pneumonia or not, sigh, so I'm watching it. Progression in narrative ability: A case study comparing successive ... This article is interesting. Mentions intonation, performance, memorization. Just gets the mind thinking about the things that are missing from SGM.

When we drove the Oregon coast, we use a Frommer's guide to plan everything. They have one specific to Oregon and another for the whole coast (Seattle to CA) https://www.amazon.com/Frommers-EasyGuide-Seattle-Portland-EasyGuides/dp/1628873809/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1526360614&sr=8-2&keywords=frommer's+guide+oregon&dpID=512YnreAqnL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch There aren't a lot of hotels on the coast, but you might make out ok winging it. The one thing I would do is call ahead for dinner reservations. Some of the restaurants on the coast are AMAZING, totally amazing, and they can get busy for dinner. The redwoods needed a solid half day at least. The caverns in southern Oregon (it was a national park) were unique and worth doing if you like caverns. The mailbag airboat rides on the Rogue river are worth doing. The southern part of the Oregon coast is fine, but the northern part is more interesting, at least to me. It starts to fizzle as you go south, and in the part that fizzles there will be less of things (less restaurants, etc.). At least that's how I remember it. So don't feel compelled to make your time on the coast even, if that makes sense. There are places to pull over and watch whales. There's so much that's beautiful, you definitely won't want to rush. I can see the idea of the drone, but I don't know what would happen if it gets windy or something. Might be sad. Obviously he knows what he's doing. It's just some pretty rough terrain. Our trip was several years ago, but I think we spent a whole week doing mainly the coast. We went in and did the Columbia River Gorge, hiking the falls, and flying to Mt. St. Helens one day. But other than that, it was all the coast. There's that much. You could add a couple days, if you're wanting to linger. The food is amazing and there are lots of things to do, including history stuff, boat tours, kite shops, umbrella shops. You can spend hours just on the side watching whales. Me, I like the food when I travel. There was a restaurant so good, you just wanted to stay a few extra days and eat again and again, lol. Enjoy your trip! :)

I think you're right that not everything happens just because you work on it. I meet lots of kids at our social skills therapy place who get an hour of speech for expressive language a week, and they still don't have tons coming out. And I think they do assess and go diminishing returns, more hours wouldn't get us more. With ds, right now, more hours is getting us more. He's literally sucking up 2-3 hours a day of this, and the more we do, the more he smiles and seems connected and enthused. It's good interaction, but I think it's kind of a just right challenge. We'll probably continue at this pace until we hit walls and it becomes evident we're not gaining like we were. I think he had a backlog of untapped capabilities, things he was ready to do that needed to be unleashed. When a dc has been getting therapy all along, they wouldn't have that. We'll see if this lung mess goes to pneumonia. I've been in bed two days now, sigh, just up for breaks and variety. I don't know if I'm going to pull it out or not. Will probably be obvious tomorrow morning. I got exposed to a virus at the IEP meeting 3 weeks ago, and I think I was so stressed my body just held onto it and didn't fight. I keep having headaches and fatigue for 3 weeks but not getting sick. Now I'm out and out sick, with fevers, etc. sigh. Dh worked with ds a bit today, which was funny, haha. They were doing fine on the category work, because that was little games (play tic tac toe by listing things in the category on the square, etc.). My next move will be to watch the NDT tool videos, because those are specific to ASD. I'm really interested to hear what she says about developing narratives in autism. She may have a progression, like you say, dunno.

I'm not necessarily going to hire another SLP for language in July when my higher funding starts. I have other things to use that money for, and I'm enjoying doing this work with him.

The audio on this video improves at 8 minutes in. She explains how you go from SGM narrative to expository. Kinda long, but should be good. Interestingly, she says that when she developed SGM in 1991 she was working in a school for dyslexia. She wanted the markers to help the students ask questions to develop their narratives. It WASN'T a tool developed for autism by someone working with autism, which might explain the holes and the assumptions. There's this assumption that if they have those points they can create a narrative, that the parts will lead to the whole. They also seem to start with larger sources, where WTM still has young children narrating (strictly retelling) brief sources, even for expository/informational writing. The video is a little tedious, but it will probably be useful. I'm 20 minutes in on the 1:40, tick tock.

Here's a video where she spends an hour explaining Braidy.

http://speechymusings.com/2016/04/12/conversation-cell-phones/ this is cute. http://speechymusings.com/2017/02/13/no-prep-game-to-target-describing/ This game would work well when working on attributes, and it doesn't cost anything.

Ok, look at something like this from blog. http://speechymusings.com/2013/02/13/comprehending-and-paraphrasing-expository-texts/ I LIKE that she's turning narrative work into a game. That would be HUGE with my ds. Love, love. It seems like this could be a *step* in the process. Definitely good to turn it into games. Just could see this going a lot further. Since the post was made in 2013, maybe she matured her thinking or developed more steps?

Found what the ps SLP was liking from TPT. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Learning-and-Identifying-Story-Grammar-Parts-in-Narratives-3451176 This SLP reviews MW/SGM on her blog, so you may have already seen that. Looks like she also has a middle school language kit too. Here's a blog post from that TPT vendor, and what's interesting is I'm not sure she's actively using the MW visuals, hmm. I thought I had read SGM reviews on her site, but she's showing different visuals in a Nov 2017 blog post. Maybe these are the visuals in her TPT kit?? Yup, that first link, peach with the owl, is the stuff that is pictured and explained fully on her blog post here. http://speechymusings.com/2017/11/25/teaching-story-grammar-parts-narratives/ It's interesting. It's much more in line with the stuff I buy from other SLP sources. It could be more flexible/rearrangeable, because you could print her tokens on magnets and rearrange them on a board or laminate and put magnets on the back to rearrange. MW clearly goes much, much farther. Their story maps, where they show how to expand the concept of setting into a descriptive paragraph, how to use the pieces to build a more sophisticated essay, etc. are terrific. But really, the SLP at our ps is saying she uses this simple $10 kit with SGM. I'm guessing she uses SGM for the maps? That would be kind of confusing to go back and forth with the symbols. I don't know. I'm going to explore some more and see what this blog is saying.

This is interesting. It's very wordy compared to something like The Way To A, but it works. Makes you wonder what a behaviorist would be thinking in that situation. I got distracted by the idea of the child being implied to that he was bad, etc., but still it's interesting.

Btw, it's a total peeve of mine that the author is constantly citing her (highly verbal, clearly precocious) granddaughter in videos and in the texts. These materials are being used both in classrooms and for intervention services and therapy, but it seems like most of the examples given in the texts are of mainstream classroom use, which really doesn't tell us how it goes with kids with disabilities, even though we assume that's the market. They're presenting at ASHA and saying it's their market, but they're citing mainstream classrooms and precocious kids for their success stories rather than talking about kids with autism. So then flip that and consider the NDT (Narrative and Discourse Builder Tool) from Northern Speech Services. The developer of that has a video course I purchased but haven't watched yet. She actually says she's trying to build narratives in kids with autism, and her tool is more flexible (important with autism to lead away from rigid expectations) and has some extras like matching bubbles to pull down for each main detail where the student can expand with dialogue, etc. I agree MW has pushed the concepts farther, with their maps, sure, but the simple analysis of the NDT and it's ability to hold information in a more flexible, expandable format is possibly more practical. I've got the NDT, and I'm not sure I'm going to return it. I'm not totally convinced that a linear braid is really the best way to teach structure to my ds. I want something flexible and rearrangeable. I think the MW magnets could possibly work well within NDT. I'm not sure I want to go all the way to Inspiration and a more complex approach right now. Oral narratives are supposed to flow naturally. You shouldn't need Inspiration to do them, kwim? When I actually think about how my ds will get out a narrative, I think it's MUCH more likely that NDT will be useful to him than the SGM brain. I like Braidy, and I like OD. I'm just not super sold on their middle stage. But again, I'm just brain dumping my thought process. We had a poster some time ago saying she was putting a lot of emphasis on narration with her ASD kids, and now a bunch of us are like ok this is a really important step. But there's a gap from knowing you need to do it to figuring out how to do it. And the point of SGM seems to be that if they understood the structure they would get it out. I'm not sure that's the case. i think it can more just result in cryptic, non-natural narratives that are hyper-condensed and don't flow. I'm not saying it HAS to, but it clearly would happen with my ds if you just plunked him in with an SLP trying to race to the end. They don't have 4 hours a week for a school year to work on this, and that's the kind of devotion it would take with my ds, seems to me, to do Braidy, to develop that foundation in a natural, full, rounded, engaging, communicative way. There's seemingly little discussion of the actual LANGUAGE of the narratives, what defines genres, tone, style. With a student like mine, I'd like to develop some tone and style within a simple narrative or expository structure before expanding to longer structures. What would that look like to tell a simple retelling as a fable vs. an epic vs. ... There's no discussion of changing time or place or adding details. All of our stuff we know needs to happen from our progymnasta is just not being mentioned in MW. The SLPs are not writing experts. They don't know progymnasta. In reality, CC (Common Core) isn't so far off from progym. But there's a lot more that could happen with MW that would be EASY to make happen with modification. So that, to me, is where I see something like Braidy in 4th grade, OD with WWS in high school, and in-between steps where you expand Braidy/SGM and fit it to a progym sequence of medium length sources (CAP's series, Writing Tales, whatever). For my ds to do those from 5th-8th would be pretty astonishing. Again, just more thinking out loud. But that's why I've been thinking so hard about how they merge, whether the methodology is rigid or can be made more flexible to fit a more typical WTM/SWB + progym progression. If I can get there, that's where I'd like to be. If I can't, I can't. I think it could be fun. I've always had this faint impression that ds is actually language GIFTED under his language ability. I don't know why I've believed that, but it underlies everything I'm doing. I think he's been glitched up, and someday it will come out.

Just for fun, if someone buys OD based on what I wrote there and hates it, doesn't find it useful, send it to me and I'll buy it off you. :) Also, it looks like they ran some pretty crazy 1/2 price deals last December. You never know what they'll do, but they might do that again. Might let people stagger if they don't need everything at once.

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/presentations These are the slides for a bunch of their recent ASHA talks. At this point, what I'm trying to sort out is how their expository writing books overlap or progress. They have: -Talk to Write, Write to Learn--2008, 248 pages, narrative and expository maps, 5 paragraph essay, book choices and probably target ages/grades are lower than Thememaker -The Core of the Core--2012, no TOC show in sample to tell pages, maps will be closest to what would be useful for classical/WTM style narrations, since CC, as written in the standards, parallels WTM writing, the maps look very useful, however their presentation of the CC standards is very brief and oversimplified to emphasize how their product can fit the standards rather than explaining, at least in the samples, how far you have to stretch the methodology to actually make all that happen. Not saying you can't, but it really needs effort to bolster it for WTM writing. MW seems to have this fettish with analyzing scenes, and nobody wants to narrate just a scene out of a book, mercy. We want them to get the gestalt, the big picture, recognize the most important part of the flow of a book. Now maybe they hit that in Thememaker and give some better tools? Dunno. I see a big gap between the writing the ps is trying to make happen (based on the comments in the book of schools using it) and what we might think in our mind is logical to make happen. -Thememaker--2008, 237+ pages, focuses on expository, starts with very complex sources for the lessons and seems to be focused on comprehension (extracting components from a larger text and discussing and boiling them down) rather than the beginner steps of small text for tight purpose (1st grade info retelling, 2nd grade info retelling, etc.). Seems to go into very complex territory (arguments, cause/effect, etc.) I think if you were only asking about CoC vs. Thememaker for someone starting in lower grades, CoC could go first, bridge from Braidy/SGM to expository, and THEN you'd come in with Thememaker. For someone starting older, the question would be whether you want them to start with larger works where they extract ideas or whether they should practice with shorter texts and stick to a more targeted goal. There's nothing babyish about CoC, and there's no reason why you can't go through a progression from brief model to larger source. I would note that even WWS isn't asking the student to do something as challenging as Thememaker, because Thememaker literally seems to assume a student can read a book and pull from it all these debates and facts and points. WWS gives the student the points and asks him to organize and retell cohesively. That would be an in-between step. I think for my student Thememaker might be high school or completely out of reach. Unless there's a way to simplify it down conceptually. My guess is the books are good but their thought process is not as tight as it could be with the models/sources. So it might be possible to use the maps but use them with more appropriate text. We also don't know how the maps differ or overlap between CoC and TM. You can buy just the map downloads btw, $15. So that is an option too, once you get one of the products and are clicking. You might just buy the maps from the other and move forward. At this point, I think for where my ds is (rising 4th by age, much lower for narrative ability), I'm probably looking at T2W and CoC. The Thememaker Expository Text Structures poster/mini poster shows the 7 structures (descriptive, list, sequence, cause/effect, problem/solution, persuade, compare/contrast). To me, those are super similar to your WWS toolbox stuff. So then you go ok, would you be able to target a structure (descriptive), beginning with the most tight level (Braidy or pseudobraidy but age appropriate with pages off TPT) and then do it with a little more complex and so on. I think it's notable who blithely CoC and all the materials skip that the major steps need expansion. There are no tools to mark dialogue, nothing to mark details. It's all just a super linear presentation, with the seeming assumption that narratives will fit that order (which they don't), that the student will be able to expand those bead/detail steps (maybe they have maps for this?), and that the student will be able to link them together to create an actual flow (which he might or might not). I think it has potential as a tool, but I just see these instructional weaknesses. I think the user would have to be constantly correcting, making sure they get whole narratives and don't focus on the analysis, making sure they do real retellings of real material and not searching high and low to find sources that fit a particular scheme. I think Braidy could be an amazing starting point for students on the spectrum. I think how old would depend on the humor and flexibility of the child. It uses children's literature, tight sources, and of course simpler sources are entertaining, disarming, and clear. What better way to teach a skill than to go to the easiest point, bring it very within reach, and build forward? There's no reason why you couldn't go from descriptions in children's lit to descriptions in magazines that are age appropriate and of special interest to descriptions in lit on their reading level, kwim? You could go through a progression like that. The SLP at our ps said that she starts everyone with SGM, mainly because it's what she has, LOL, but that she has to go back and do those breakouts with TPT lessons. I'll go look for what she was using and link. I liked the look of the Braidy lessons, so I think I'd rather start there. I'm looking for the simplest, smallest piece of the skill, so I can get him confident there and move forward. The SLP at the ps just wanted to get them advanced as quickly as possible, and I want him SUCCESSFUL by building a foundation. I stand by my comment that FFC is the foundation for all this work. This coming week we begin attributes (I'm sick today), and I'm excited to see how far we can get with attributes and how that creates a language foundation for him to be ABLE to do the descriptive tasks in MW. To me there's a total flow there. I'm trying to organize his brain to think that way and get his brain noticing it before I show him some symbol and am frustrated that very little comes out. For me, the detailed, age-appropriate, challenging FFC work is creating the foundation for MW. -Oral Discourse Strategies---2015, 125+ pages, NOW we're finally getting somewhere! This book bills itself as the advanced material. Page 9 shows a structure for analysis that would work well with WWS. MW is not set up to do that, because MW is persistently linear. However if you want to know how to get MW to bridge to WWS, that's how it would work. You would probably have to do it with the magnet sets or, better, Inpsiration software. If you made templates in Inspiration to fit those structures or if you made laminated pages that you kept to the side to show the student, you could work through the structures, one at a time, and assemble larger essays, WTM-style. And I'm saying within say a month of focusing on an expository structure, you could go from Braidy to Theme/OD, all the way. At least in theory you could. That would be intense, like doing a brief model every day, analysis to oral narration, every day, boom boom. You definitely could get there. If the student has the LANGUAGE to get it out, he could get there. If he doesn't have the language, then we're backing up to that how do we get the language. My ds wasn't using active verbs (function), can't describe things (features), etc. So he needed language work before he could do those steps. There are slideshows for all these programs probably on that MW link. The OD has one, because that was how I found the rest. I'm looking at the OD sample, and look at how they included language bubbles. Those could be used for dialogue. This could go SO much farther. The analysis could be less linear and more REAL. You could unhitch the MW symbols from the highly linear, fixed SGM braided tool and do them in inspiration on a whiteboard entirely, using them to retell real material of high interest to the student. The trick there is not to use ALL the tools. The trick is to find real material and only use one or two of the magnets or pieces of analysis. I think the emphasis on a complete episode can be misleading, since writers DON'T always write that way. The more the person teaching with these tools understands writing and the tools, the more they can divorce themselves from the material and go at it a different way. The irony is, at that point they'll be doing what WTM says to do, haha. The methodologies are totally compatible, and the OD book is your best chance maybe at seeing that. With my dd, straight ADHD, the SWB toolbox approach was a good fit because it fit her non-linear thought process. I think a very linear approach would tend to exacerbate the rigid tendencies of ASD. What I don't know is whether the ASD student is actually developmentally ready to get there, or whether it's like nice thought, not necessary, give a briefer structure that works and move on with life, kwim? Like lots of things are good, but they aren't necessarily good NOW. It might be something that would click later, much later. I can't speak to that, only saying I think the possibility exists. In theory, if you believe what you read from the Left-Brained people and all that, then kids on the spectrum *should* be non-linear thinkers who benefit from a toolbox approach, ie. going all the way to OD. Like it might be that OD would give them the big picture and make MORE sense than starting off in the middle with SGM. They might do better with OD plus BRAIDY. Seriously. I could totally see that. I think all that matters is that it's clicking, not what the age on the book says. To give someone the big picture and then go back and work through the parts from the very beginning (OD to Braidy then back to OD), that could actually work. Says the woman who doesn't have a dc of that age. I'll go look for the TPT stuff. I could eat crow on all this. I'm just trying to sort it out myself. I'm seeing these 4 books, all hitting expository, and I was trying to figure out how they overlap, who the targets were. The reason T2W doesn't fit the flow of the rest is it was mainly authored by the MW people's BIL. Now he's probably super awesome, but that's probably why it's this anomaly in the series. If it was written in the same year as Thememaker, maybe there was collaboration going on and they said hey go run with your vision on this? I also don't know how the maps overlap. That's as far as I got.

If you're an undermethylator and you take 5HTP, can you tell me about how you got those things in balance? We're trying to figure this out for my dd. She's homozygous for the TPH2 defect, meaning she needs 5HTP, but she's also heterozygous for C677T of the MTHFR, meaning she's slightly undermethylated. The 5HTP pulls down your methyl levels. How did you get it figured out to get the 5HTP levels up without making yourself feel worse? She's having trouble putting into words what she's feeling. Any articles or things that helped you?

Kbutton, have you seen the paraphrasing workbooks from the Spotlight series (Linguisystems)? http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10482 http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10317 Ds is almost finished with his categories work for the week. Hopefully just one more day will do it. Next we start into attributes. I got the SPARK for Attributes book and the Spotlight on Vocab book for Attributes. We're almost done with the Spotlight on Main Ideas, hopefully with just one more week, so we'll probably go into the Spotlight on Details next. I'm eyeing the SPARC for Basic Routines, because I think it has a lot of potential to be done multiple ways. They're super tight, super brief sequences, very relatable stuff for him. I think it might work. Maybe this book would interest Lecka? It would definitely be in the realm of talking about your everyday. I was watching a video the author of the VBA book (I forget her name) put on her FB feed. She was talking about the pitfalls of teaching carrier phrases. I thought it was interesting, because there's definitely that potential with the work I'm doing for it to turn into carrier phrases. Worked on our IEP with the school today. The ps SLP is over the moon for SGM and thought it would be awesome for ds. Categories have turned out to be pretty easy for ds, but that's nice to have an easier week. I'm thinking attributes are gonna be a bear.

Look, make it simple. He has issues with transitions and he's motivated by his music practice. He needs to wake up and do a fair chunk of his school work before he can practice music. He'll eat faster, work with less delays, etc. Are the transitions affecting all of life or only academics?

Do you know how to do a google site search? You go to your google bar and put in your terms plus site:welltrainedmind.com So if we've had threads on what you want to know (3rd grade dyslexic math, whatever), they'll show up. And of course you can always start threads here, on LC. I've spent a lot of time doing board searches like that, because I wanted to see how things end up. You get to hear voices from the past, see what they did, and follow them. Like you might like what LoriD wrote about doing math in 3rd grade and you might keep searching for her other posts on math over the years, kwim?

I'm not sure the board groups are private anyway, because their posts show up on google searches. You might think about what you need, whether it's anonymity or freedom to vent or emotional support or solutions or what. You can write someone privately, back channel, with a pm, maybe cc in a few other people that you think would be helpful, and there you go, your own private discussion. It won't show up on google search, it won't be connected to your real name like a FB group. It won't be perfectly secure, either, in the sense that someone from the correspondence could take out what you've written and discuss or repost it elsewhere. But in the scheme of things, for privacy, when you want to let your hair down, that's a way.