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speech and language teaching concepts for The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes in speech therapy​ ​
Frequent Speech Sounds:

/st/ medial
/tr/ medial
/s/ final

Themes:

back to school
pressure
perfection
growth mindset

Book Details:
Diverse Characters: Yes
Age Recommendation: Elementary, Late Elementary

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes

By Mark Pett

Beatrice Bottomwell has NEVER (not once!) made a mistake. She never forgets her math homework, she never wears mismatched socks, and she ALWAYS wins the yearly talent show at school. In fact, the entire town calls her The Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes! One day, the inevitable happens: Beatrice makes a huge mistake in front of everyone! But in the end, readers (and perfectionists) will realize that life is more fun when you enjoy everything—even the mistakes.

This growth mindset back to school book can be used in speech therapy to address social/emotional issues like being ok with making mistakes and dealing with pressure to be perfect. It is also great for noticing character expressions and for targeting mental state verbs as well as for /st/, /er/, /tr/ and /s/ sounds! Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes in speech therapy below:

Key Teaching Concepts

Narrative Structure:

complete episode​

Narrative Concepts:

vocabulary
predicting​
theme/message
inferencing​
character analysis​
illustration study​
social/emotional​
verbs (regular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (mental state)
text features​

Vocabulary:

proper, exactly, mistakes, almost, barely, worried, off her game, perfect, delight, surprised, stunned, react

Character Analysis:

Beatrice does everything right all the time and is known for it by everyone. One day when she almost makes a mistake, she starts to doubt herself and worries about what will happen if she keeps making mistakes. During her performance, she feels pressure from the audience and ultimately makes a mistake. When she handles it with grace and lots of laughs, she realizes that it can actually be fun to do things not so perfect all the time.

Social/Emotional:

Beatrice learns to accept that sometimes we all make mistakes and that it’s ok to not be so perfect and follow rules exactly all the time.

Grammar:

verbs (regular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (mental state)
complex sentence structure

Text Features:

ellipses
speech bubbles
enlarged pictures
enlarged text

Inferencing:

What can you infer about her personality if she remembers to do all of these things?
How do you think Beatrice felt about all the things she was good at?
What do you think people think about Beatrice?
What do you think about Carl’s personality?
Why do you think Carl loved to make mistakes?
Why do you think Beatrice likes being a perfectionist?
How did she feel about almost making her first mistake?
How was she feeling if she felt her stomach jumping inside her?
How do you think peoples comments impact Beatrice?
What do you think she was thinking when she made the mistake?
Why do you think she started to laugh?
Why do you think she slept better than she ever had?
Why do you think she put on two different socks in the morning?
How do you think it must’ve felt for her to be called by her name?

Predicting:

Who do you think her “fans” were?
What do you think people would do if Beatrice made a mistake?
What do you think could go wrong when she goes to get the eggs?
What do you think will happen during her performance?
What do you think is in the pepper shaker?
What do you think will happen when Beatrice breaths in salt?
How do you think she will react?
What do you think she will do in the morning?

If you are interested in seeing other back to school books to use in therapy, then check out the Seasonal Teaching Points Book List for a printable copy.