The text of the Animated Step-by-Steps™ recipes are
obviously written in the present tense to provide students with step by step
instructions for preparing a specific food item. When items are added sequentially
to a bowl in an Animated Step-by-Steps™
Recipe there are always visual representations of all the items previously
added to the bowl, e.g., the mound of cake mix, the cut strawberries, the pool
of cooking oil.
Why is this important?
This strategy allows you to model the use of the past tense while simultaneously
supporting memory recall. “ First we added the (expectant pause pointing to the item) … strawberries. Then we poured the (expectant pause pointing
to the milk) … milk into our bowl.
Mmmm what did we add after the milk ?……
Let’s look in our bowl. I see something
that is yellow (pointing to the oil in the bowl) …. I think that might be the (expectant
pause) … oil … We added some oil to our bowl.” This
might also be a great time to use the pen tools on the interactive whiteboard
to spell out the past tense verbs, underlining their regular past tense endings
or further emphasizing the fact that they are representative of an irregular
verb.
In similar fashion the measured ingredient often moves on to
the page accompanied by the source ingredient, e.g. the container of milk, the
container of oil, the bag of brown sugar. This ‘source item’ remains visible on
the page after the empty measuring cup exits the page. Again there is a concrete
visual reminder of which item was last added. These visual reminders (either
inside or outside the bowl) can at least help students jump the hurdle of what
to say when asked to formulate a message using the past tense.
…’til the next post …
(new posts every Monday)
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©2016 Carol Goossens’, Ph.D.
Augmentative Communication Consultant
Speech-Language Pathologist
Special Educator
