Making Your Own SGM Braid

I always have a number of students working on listening comprehension. I have tried different programs to teach this, including Visualizing and Verbalizing by Lindamood-Bell. However, the one tool I always seem to come back to is the Story-Grammar-Marker (SGM) braid by Mindwing Concepts.

The original Braidy

For those unfamiliar with the SGM program - it is essentially a visual organizer that can be used to talk about and recall story elements. It consists of a braid that can be manipulated via removable icons and beads. Each part of the bead corresponds to a different story element. 

I have been using this braid with some of my 5th grade students to work on short story / paragraph comprehension this fall. They really loved "Braidy", so I promised them that I would figure out a way to make our very own version of the story braid to keep. 

To create our homemade SGM braid, I searched for beads similar to the ones on the original Braidy, which we strung onto a pipe cleaner and secured with a Binder Ring. Some of the beads we used include Smiley Beads, Star Beads, Heart Beads, Faceted Beads, and a hand bead (I found this one at Walmart!).

The result was a cute little visual that students can use whenever we work on story retell.They really enjoyed making these and are now even more into the retell activities than before! This is a great extension activity for those little hands-on learners if you are using SGM with them.