Short animated videos

Appropriate Population: 

• School-age (5 years and up)
• Mild delay or age-appropriate cognitive and language abilities

Goal:

• Identifying clues for inferencing
• Answering inference questions
• Perspective Taking

Steps:

1. Choose an appropriate video from the inferencing video list.
2. Watch the video with your client and pause the video at various appropriate intervals and ask an inference question.
3. Identify clues in the video which can help answer the question.
4. Identify information which the client knows (background knowledge) to help answer the question. 
5. Answer the inference question. 
6. For example
   1. Inference question: Why is the boy upset at his sister?
   2. Clues from the video: The boy has his backpack on and is wearing his school uniform. The sister is in her PJs. The boy is looking at his watch. 
   3. Information that we know from this: Backpack on + wearing school uniform= The boy is ready to go to school. The sister in her PJs= the sister is not ready for school. The boy looking at his watch= the boy might be worried he would be late. 
   4. Answer: The boy is upset at his sister because he is worried that his sister might make him late for school.
7. Repeat these steps to work on more inference questions in the video.  

Step up: 

• Provide less support to your client when answering the questions. 

Step down:

• Provide more support and scaffolding. 

Resources:

• Snack Attack- an old lady just wants to eat her cookies in peace at the train station
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38y_1EWIE9I 
  • Example inference questions:
    • 1:05 Why is the grandma ramming her body into the vending machine?
    • 1:25 Why is the grandma happy?
    • 1:43 Why did the grandma put the cookies on her lap?
    • 2:10 Why is the grandma so angry?
    • 2:15 Why did the grandma pull out the man’s earphone plug?
    • 2:31 Why does the grandma look so sad?
    • 4:04 What was the grandma feeling at the end of the story? Why was she feeling that way?

• The Present- A boy, who spends all his time playing video games, is given a special present by his mum
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XA0bB79oGc
  • Example inference questions:
    • 0:32 Why is the boy annoyed at his mum?
    • 1:10 Why doesn’t the boy like the dog?
    • 2:58 Why is the boy going outside?
    • 3:23 (end of story) Why did the mum get the boy a present?

• For the birds– A group of birds sitting on a powerline are visited by an unwanted visitor 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYTrIcn4rjg
  • Example inference questions:
    • 0:39 Why did the first bird peck at the second bird?
    • 1:10 What are the little birds doing? Why are they behaving like that?
    • 1:36 What did the big bird do? Why did it do that?
    • 2:01 Why are the little birds pecking at the big bird’s claws?
    • 2:24 What do you think the little birds are saying? Why are they trying to stop the 2 little birds from pecking at the big bird’s claws now?
    • 2:44 Why is the little bird naked/featherless?

• Simon’s cat videos– These non-verbal videos about a cat’s life are great for working on non-verbal inference skills. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH6vXjt-BA7QHl0KnfL-7RQ)
• More videos: https://seldomspeechless.com/2020/12/08/animated-shorts-for-speech-therapy/