Solve a real classroom problem. Learn what to do when students can read the words but still struggle to understand the meaning.
Start next year with a proven framework. Use the Story Grammar Marker® Approach to make comprehension visible, teachable, and transferable.
Learn at your own pace. Complete the course over summer break in a manageable rhythm—about an hour a day.
Enroll in Language Comprehension Instruction for Educators by June 21, 2026 and receive a complimentary Settle Into Summer Learning Care Package filled with thoughtful essentials to help you stay refreshed, focused, and inspired this summer.
• Self-Paced • Hands-On Implementation Resources • Live Support • Certificate of Completion • Optional Graduate-Level Credits
Structured for Fidelity. Flexible for Implementation.
The Approach
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach gives educators a consistent, research-based framework for teaching language comprehension without requiring a rigid lesson-by-lesson script.
Using hands-on visual tools, shared icons, instructional routines, and clear language targets, educators learn how to make comprehension visible, teachable, and transferable.
The approach supports instruction in oral language development, narrative and informational discourse, inferential thinking, perspective-taking, Theory of Mind, vocabulary, and sentence building for improved listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
The Course
The Language Comprehension Instruction for Educators: A Missing Factor For Visible Literacy Instruction Course teaches educators how to implement the Story Grammar Marker® Approach with clarity, intentionality, and fidelity.
Across five units, participants move through a clear progression of research foundations, learning targets, modeled examples, practice opportunities, and implementation supports.
Rather than offering isolated strategies, the course teaches educators how to apply an integrated framework across academic and social learning contexts.
The Difference
Together, The Story Grammar Marker® Approach and the course create a semi-manualized instructional framework.
Educators receive a clear, explicit, and systematic structure for teaching language comprehension; while still preserving the flexibility and professional decision-making for instruction across students, settings, texts, and learning goals.
The structure stays consistent. The teaching stays responsive.
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach
For Language Development, Inference Generation, and Discourse-Level Comprehension and Expression
Join thousands of educators, parents, and other professionals in implementing the Story Grammar Marker® Approach with our virtual courses, onsite workshops, coaching, and hands-on instructional materials!
Tool Tuesday: May the Fourth and the Picture Books of Jeffrey Brown
This post comes just a little in advance of a timely “holiday!” May the Fourth (Be With You) is a great day to celebrate students’ widespread interest in all things Star Wars. One of my favorite resources over the years has been Jeffrey Brown’s series, which started with Darth Vader and Son. This and other books by Brown require a stretch of the imagination: what if Luke (and other characters) actually grew up with Vader as a father figure?...
Tool Tuesday: National Parks are just “meh”
Clinicians and educators are always looking for high-interest materials that naturally invite both narrative and expository language use. I lead a session each semester at Boston University in which graduate students in speech-language pathology analyze various picture books for their narrative and expository content. One of the guiding questions is always “What’s your post-activity?”...
Tool Tuesday: The Narrative/Social Self-Regulation Connection
As an SLP working in a social educator role, I am frequently asked to process events with my students that have occurred outside of our sessions. I find it particularly helpful to add visual support to these conversations with students, so my go-to is to use sketches of stick figures, movement, word and thought bubbles, along with other situational elements, ala Comic Strip Conversations, an approach originally described by Carol Gray. Teresa Ukrainetz has also been a champion of the value of sketching in strategies such as Stickwriting Stories and Sketch and Speak…
Tool Tuesday: The Picture Books of Mac Barnett!
Barnett’s stories are playful, visual, and funny. Whether it’s the humor in Oh, No! and Oh, No (Not Again), or the adventure and irony of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, these books present many narrative and expository opportunities with Story Grammar Marker®, Thememaker®’s expository maps, and, of course, visual tools such as magnets and digital icons. What sets many of these books apart is the way they use visual cues, nonverbal behavior, and subtle character plans—a perfect match for SGM® icons that help students recognize story structure and the “landscape of consciousness” (characters’ plans, mental states, and feelings)...
Learn why Maryellen Rooney Moreau, M.Ed. CCC-SLP developed the Story Grammar Marker® Approach to language & literacy!
Improve Language, Literacy, Higher Order Language & Cognitive Skills
- Oral Language Development
- Language Comprehension
- Awareness of Text Structure
- Reading Comprehension
- Sentences, Questions & Cohesive Ties
- Vocabulary and Background Knowledge
- Critical Thinking
- Inference Generation
- Narrative & Informational Writing
- Verbal Reasoning
- Social Emotional Learning
- Theory of Mind
- Perspective-Taking
- Situation Model & Mental Models
Develop Foundational Language & Cognitive Skills and Social, Emotional, & Mental Well-Being
- Co- and Self-Regulation
- Fostering Resilience
- Working Memory
- Empathy Building
- Sequencing Routines
- Problem Solving
- Emotional Intelligence
- Organizing Thoughts
- Mediating Meltdowns
- Facilitating Conversations
- Resolving Conflicts
- Executive Functioning
- Mediating Sibling Rivalry
- Goal-Setting
- Thinking and Talking About Feelings, Plans, Thoughts, Outcomes
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach improves the language and literacy skills of children by empowering Educators, Parents, Specialists, SLPs, Psychologists to…
Foster High Student Engagement with our easy-to-use icon-based system and hands-on, intuitive tools.
Encourage Interdisciplinary Collaboration among students, classroom teachers, SLPs, specialists, parents, reading teachers, literacy coaches, content area teachers, psychologists and more!
Cultivate a Common Language in the Classroom, the Therapy Room, the Playground – and HOME!
Facilitate Classroom Management via organizing expectations, sequencing routines, solving problems and resolving interpersonal conflicts, and assisting with self-regulation.
Save Time: the SGM® is LOW PREP — once you know the system, you can grab the tools and maps in the moment, in any situation, during any lesson!
Make quality instructional decisions based upon scientific research, models and frameworks, and delivering explicit, systematic, and differentiated instruction.
Nurture a Growth Mindset and a “CAN DO!” attitude. Discover students’ Superpowers!
Promote Equity and Inclusivity by providing support for ALL LEARNERS regardless of age, ability or background, and giving every student a VOICE! Give them a tool that will help them to TELL THEIR STORY.
Discourse is a Missing Link In Literacy Instruction!
The Story Grammar Marker® Approach is rooted in the DISCOURSE Level of Language Development.
Click below to learn more about the building blocks of language and literacy.
In 1991, based on years of research and experience, Maryellen Rooney Moreau, M.Ed., CCC-SLP, pioneered the idea of designing meaningful symbols “icons” to represent the components of story grammar that make up the episode of a story.
She created a powerful tool that children can hold in their hands to tell a story. When it worked so well for one 3rd grader, it was field-tested by speech pathologists & reading specialists in a private school on a college campus. Word of its success with a neurodivergent population brought the Story Grammar Marker® Approach to the attention of public school programs, and has become widely used in general education classrooms as well! It is now in use in 36 countries across the globe.
In 2014, Maryellen was recognized for her professional work as creator of the Story Grammar Marker® Approach and related methodology, and as the founder of MindWing Concepts, Inc., when she became the 2014 recipient of the Alice H. Garside Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Dyslexia Association, Massachusetts Branch.
People learn best from others, so we thought you’d like to hear from others who have used and support the SGM® Approach to teach reading comprehension and critical thinking.
“Scientists have long known that human beings are storytelling creatures. For centuries, we have told stories to transmit information, share histories, and teach important lessons. While stories often have a profound effect on us due to emotional content, recent research also shows that our brains are actually hard-wired to seek out a coherent narrative structure in the stories we hear and tell. This structure helps us absorb the information in a story, and connect it with our own experiences in the world.” Scientific Learning. (2012, June 14). Using Stories to Teach: How Narrative Structure Helps Students Learn [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://34.211.105.222/blog/using-stories-teach-how-narrative-structure-helps-students-learn
12 Lessons to Begin Using the Story Grammar Marker®
