Following Directions With Origami {Review}

The free ‘How to Make Origami’ app is a fun, simple tool to utilize with students who are bored with worksheets. This app will walk you and your students through the steps of how to make over 70 popular origami figures (crane, rabbit, giraffe, goldfish, tulip, etc) while using 3D animation of the folding process. Steps range from a simple 6 step walk-through on how to make a boat all the way up to the 78 step ‘how-to’ on creating a spider!   Users can easily go forward/backward through the steps as well as replay the animation. Each figure is rated for difficulty from easy to middle to hard. Directions for images rated easy and middle are provided for each step. For the images rated hard, no written directives are provided.

This can be turned into a great pragmatic language lesson wherein a student can take the lead and instruct others on the next step, engaging in a back and forth dialogue. Students have the opportunity to ask for clarification, repetition, or assistance; necessary social skills a lot of my students do not possess. Additional IEP goals related to following directions, auditory memory, sequencing, sentence formulation, can also be targeted.

For additional reinforcement related to the skills targeted, graphic organizer can be used to recall and organize steps used to create the origami image. Further working on receptive and expressive language.

Below are a few screen shots of one my favorite figures from this app.... a pig! 

Each image is presented on the screen prior to steps being introduced.

 Each step is animated and accompanied with written directives at the bottom of the screen (for easy and middle images only).

 All steps can easily be replayed. Users can go forward or back through steps.

 

 App Compatibility:

The ‘How to make Origami’ App is available on all Apple products (iPhone and iPad) as well as all Android products (phone and tablet). I have the app on both my Android phone and iPad.  In the therapy room setting I prefer using the iPad where it’s large screen is a perfect size for my small group sessions.

Have fun folding!

One Person's Trash Are My Treasures

A thoughtful friend who works for Penguin Books was cleaning out her book room last week and thought of me! She sent over an assortment of beautifully illustrated picture books. 

As you all probably know by now, I work with middle schoolers. They would undoubtedly not appreciate Ms. Sohan presenting them with “baby” books to read. How could I not have these books go to waste and incorporate them into therapy?

The solution? Cover up the words. Now I don't know about your students, but mine secretly enjoy books that contain pictures (the more the better) as it provides them a reprieve from reading, which many of them dread!

The words can be concealed with pieces of paper, index cards, post-its, etc. The now wordless picture book can be utilized with students who have difficulty with sequencing, story grammar, vocabulary, perspective taking, details/descriptions, cause/effect etc. The pictures will provide students with visual support to aid in the development of their literacy skills. Note, this can be easily viewed as juvenile to some middle schoolers, tread carefully and be creative! For more of a challenge, this can even be turned into a writing activity, where students create sentence for each image as to generate their own narrative.

Those of you who are more tech-savvy can utilize any voice recording program on your device to capture your students narrative (phone, iPad, etc). The narratives can then be replayed between utterances/pages and judged for its syntactical, semantic, and/or sequential appropriateness. Incorporating such technology will definitely serve to motivate even the most disinterested student.

Happy "reading!"