Lindamood Bell...

[OneStepAtATime]

Edited to add that there are several perspectives represented on this thread.  I am leaving my original post up, but ask that anyone reading this read all the way through, especially if you are considering going to a LMB center.  There are several posts further down in this thread that might help your decision:

 

I was talking with a parent in another city who was considering putting her children in the Lindamood Bell center they have there.  She believes in the program. Other family members have used it with success but did it on their own since they did not live in cities where a center existed.  She works full time and wanted to see if a center would work better since she felt she did not have the time to tutor. In looking into this in more depth, she found this and thought I might be interested in reading through the reviews of former employees since we have used LiPS on our own (no center anywhere even remotely near us, even if we had wanted to go that route but she thought I would appreciate that there is an in-home option even more after skimming the site below...)

 

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Lindamood-Bell-Learning-Processes-Reviews-E193711.htm

 

It appears that mostly everyone agrees that the program itself is solid.  However, the centers and corporation really seem to only want to make money and no longer really care about the kids. If I am sending my child to something like this I would expect every single person working with them to have extensive training and background knowledge.  That does not appear to be the case at all.  2 weeks of training, and lots of college kids that have no experience?  Not acceptable.  Especially for what they appear to be charging.  Obviously this is just one site and perhaps there is a lot of bias here.  There may be way more to the story.

 

But after watching Barton's video on dyslexia, her concern for the kids, and her compassion, there seems a big discrepancy between the two.  And definitely a big discrepancy in the cost.  I had no idea the Lindamood Bell centers were so overwhelmingly high in cost.  $2000 a week?  Who can pay that?  Even $2000 a month is too high.  And a mandatory commitment of 6 months.  

 

Has anyone done this?  I am just trying to wrap my brain around this and wondering if anyone actually found this worthwhile.  I mean that's more than sending your child to most private schools designed specifically for dyslexic students (at least the ones I have looked at).

 

I wish with all my heart that the early levels of Barton were much cheaper.  I feel the initial cost makes it very hard for many to start the program.  But not THAT type of overpriced.  Wow!

[PeterPan]

OneStep, what problem are you trying to solve?  

 

Yes, what you are finding matches what I've read, that the people working at the LMB centers are generally average people like us (college students, maybe some moms) who got some quick training.  They are not therapists with masters.  It's a business.  They can pick it up and you can pick it up.  I've even found their training manual for the employees on ebay.  ;)

 

What problem are you wanting to solve?  You're wanting to know if going to a center would help your ds comply and have him go back through things?  LMB is not OG.  It *does* use some helpful methodologies, but the two main programs I assume you'd be looking at (LIPS and Seeing Stars) sort of frame out what you're doing with Barton.  They don't replace it.  

 

Crazy idea.  It costs $1600 to come to the major dyslexia school in our state and take their certified OG course.  It would give you a lot more tools to approach your teaching with and cost less than LMB.  You could come stay with me, hehe.  You could bring your family and get your evals done too.  Oh, that went over the top!  Well whatever.  Just brainstorming.

 

Figure out what problem you're trying to solve.  Don't get really emotional about this.  Seeing Stars is meant for very specific problems.  Even LIPS only needs to go so far to be effective.  Is it possible that because you didn't do the teaching for LIPS that you're sort of insecure on how to apply it?  What if you read through the manual yourself and then brainstormed sneaky ways to bring in what he still needs from it without him recognizing?  

 

Have you had a chance to inventory his speech yet?  Merry was on the right track that for some of the letters there are easy physical things you can do to get the connect.  L and R are, unfortunately, the beasts.  But all the rest are easier.

 

Ok, I'll just ask here.  Why is he so resistant to going back to LIPS?  I assumed (in my naivete) it was because he thought it was juvenile.  I don't think it's juvenile because I took a bunch of linguistics classes in college and know how sophisticated it is.  In fact, I'd be super-tempted to say "You know, we're going to be starting a foreign language in a year, and to make sure you are able to connect sound to written in the new language, I need to run back through these."  Obviously then you're in the pickle of needing to start a foreign language, oops.  But I'm just saying this is NOT baby stuff.  This is stuff people go to college and really THINK about how to apply.  Those LIPS pictures are the linguistic foundation of many rules of spelling and pronunciation in other languages.  Russian, for instance, is totally unlocked by those concepts.  It's amazing stuff!  

 

So where I was going with that is *if it's not that it's baby-ish* maybe the real problem is that it's *hard* for him?  I don't know.  I'm just asking the question.  Asking questions is better than freaking out, lol.  If it's hard for him, *why* is it hard for him?  Is it hard because of the speech and motor planning or hard because of the working memory?  If it's hard because of working memory, then more cognitive work will help.  I've been slowly reading SandyKC's book, and one of the things that finally hit me was her progress with her ds was BUILT ON A FOUNDATION of cognitive work.  My ds' progress is built on a foundation of cognitive work.  Like an hour a day of cognitive work.  Metronome, working memory, midline.  The metronome helps stimulate EF which improves impulsivity.  

 

Sorry, not trying to overwhelm you.  I'm just saying deep breath, slow down, ask what you're trying to solve. Your life seems pretty complicated.  I remember you've been saying you haven't been getting enough sleep.  When will that change?  Will it?  Is there anything you can slow down to give yourself more sleep?  

 

Lots of questions, sorry.

[OneStepAtATime]

Chuckle...gotta run.  I wasn't planning on using the center.  We don't have any.  Nearest is like 6 hours away.  I was just passing on what my friend found out.  I had no idea the centers were that overwhelmingly expensive.  Frankly, that seems like Highway robbery to me.  Especially since apparently the people working there may have even less knowledge and training than you or I OhE.  My friend was really disappointed since she feels she needs someone else to do the tutoring.  I don't live near her so I can't help much.  But for anyone who does live near one, I was curious if ANYONE had actually paid that kind of money and felt it was worth it.  'Cause I don't see how.  I just don't.  And it makes me appreciate Barton even more.  Hers is expensive, but at least it is more reasonable than one on one professional tutoring.  And way more reasonable that a Lindamood Bell center.

[LaughingCat]

There is even a thread on this forum from a former LMB 'teacher' saying the same as well.

 

As far as hating it and not wanting to do it - my DD is the same.  Any mention of doing it brings on major resistance.  Even when I was teaching it to little DD -  DD wanted nothing to do with it and usually she likes to 'be the teacher'.   Note: when we were actually doing it DD was fine.  She didn't like it but she didn't resist either (well, any reading program brings out some resistance). So not sure where the resistance comes from.  This is part of why I wish I had realized then that 'finishing' a program didn't mean I had to stop doing it - I so wish I had just incorporated doing a word or two a day into our daily activities. 

[merry gardens]

There was a thread a few years back from a woman (in Australia?) who temporarily moved to another city in order for her daughter to attend a Lindamood-Bell center. She blogged about her wonderful experience. I love LMB products.  I like the theory behind what goes into them.  But I wasn't impressed when I spoke to the director at the center nearest my home (which wasn't close), which the major reason I did LiPS at home on my own with the Lindamood-Bell materials.

 

I suspect that the experience varies from one center to another, and can even vary within the same center depending on the persons doing the tutoring. 

 

Before you judge LMB centers too harshly, keep in mind the cost of private tutoring is usually fairly expensive at any tutoring chain, and the cost of private tutoring is usually far above what the tutors make. My future daughter-in-law and my neighbor are teachers and both have tutored over the summer at a different national tutoring chain. One was hired straight out of college before she had her teaching credentials, and neither have degrees and experiences or training for working with learning disabilities. The center really didn't even train their tutors. 

 

One tutor center I called on test prep for the ACT and they charge $75 per hour for one-on-one instruction and can't tell me how many hours a week they'll recommend without the testing, (which is a few hundred dollars.) That was just for ACT prep with no mention of any learning disabilities. So, while LMB centers may charge a lot of money, just about every tutoring service costs significant amounts of money.

 

If you compare LMB to the cost of private speech therapy (which is how I'd compare portions of LiPS) without insurance coverage, those slp clinics charge far more than Lindamood-Bell.  I was frustrated when I brought my dd to a slp and she set my dd up on a computer to play a game to find similar sounds.  Really--$300/hr to play a computer game? After just a few sessions what I learned was that I was pushing my dd too hard with the work I asked from her at home. The evaluation was helpful because I saw where my dd stood compared to others her same age, and I appreciated having a professional I could talk with about my concerns, but I decided to not pursue further slp because I could do similar work at home with my dd with the materials I already own.

 

So, bottom line---a dedicated mom who is doing a somewhat decent job of tutoring her learning disabled child is worth far more than you realized!  We should all go buy ourselves a nice box of chocolates as teacher/tutor gifts for Christmas.

[Minerva]

We have used LMB and had an amazing experience. We do not live in the US and there are NO resources for dyslexia in my country. I was in the states for one month and really needed help. It was extravagantly expensive and I was terrified that this would be money down the tubes, but after one month of tutoring my daughter made great leaps in her reading ability. The staff was amazing. Every single person who worked there was passionate, dedicated, engaging, fun. They turned what could have been a daunting and tedious chore for my dd into a relatively painless experience. There were several people on the staff with masters degrees in education. They also let me sit in on as many sessions as I wanted, so by the time her tutoring sessions were over I was confident and able to continue with the methods they used there. I went back the following year for testing when we were in the states. It was all the same staff. If anyone was unhappy to be there, they certainly weren't showing it. We only had time for one week of tutoring for my dd, but again I was able to sit in on my daughter's sessions, and I came away with a host of techniques to continue LMB methods. 

 

It is a business. It is expensive. It is totally possible to take their classes and do it yourself. I think there are other options that are more affordable and just as helpful, but it is effective and in my case jump started our road to remediation.

[Tokyomarie]

So, bottom line---a dedicated mom who is doing a somewhat decent job of tutoring her learning disabled child is worth far more than you realized!  We should all go buy ourselves a nice box of chocolates as teacher/tutor gifts for Christmas.

 

I agree! Go buy yourself a box of chocolates. Oh, and a Starbucks gift card to go with it!

 

I do have two thoughts:  

 

Parents who frequent this board really are a cut above most parents in terms of  their willingness to learn what their child needs, figure out what materials to use, and spend the time doing the remediation work. Many parents have found that outsourcing at least part of the work to a professional saves their relationship with the child and their own sanity. Many moms who either work or have lots of children they handle with little assistance from others find it useful to have a professional involved because they don't have the time, energy, or inclination to figure out on their own how to do this work.  

 

People are right that prices in general for tutoring are high, especially in comparison to the average wage. Prices for therapies are higher and if therapies aren't covered by insurance the cost can make continuing on a regular basis unsustainable. One thing to consider when thinking about the per session cost is that built into this cost is the prep time and documentation time for that 50 minute session. Some therapists/tutors don't charge extra for regular 10-15 minute updates to parents that are built into the treatment plan. All of that time outside a session that the professional spends has to be accounted for in the session fee.

 

I have no experience with LMB centers, though I have some experience with the materials and methods. The materials and methods are good and when applied in the right situations, can be extremely helpful. But I do have to say I was shocked when I learned a year or two ago that clinicians get such a low hourly wage.   

 

[OneStepAtATime]

We have used LMB and had an amazing experience. We do not live in the US and there are NO resources for dyslexia in my country. I was in the states for one month and really needed help. It was extravagantly expensive and I was terrified that this would be money down the tubes, but after one month of tutoring my daughter made great leaps in her reading ability. The staff was amazing. Every single person who worked there was passionate, dedicated, engaging, fun. They turned what could have been a daunting and tedious chore for my dd into a relatively painless experience. There were several people on the staff with masters degrees in education. They also let me sit in on as many sessions as I wanted, so by the time her tutoring sessions were over I was confident and able to continue with the methods they used there. I went back the following year for testing when we were in the states. It was all the same staff. If anyone was unhappy to be there, they certainly weren't showing it. We only had time for one week of tutoring for my dd, but again I was able to sit in on my daughter's sessions, and I came away with a host of techniques to continue LMB methods. 

 

It is a business. It is expensive. It is totally possible to take their classes and do it yourself. I think there are other options that are more affordable and just as helpful, but it is effective and in my case jump started our road to remediation.

The material DOES seem sound.  What little DS got with Mom tutoring helped.  So many have been helped.  I don't question the program.

 

And it is heartening to hear that all that money people are spending is probably useful and helpful in most instances perhaps. The cost was just SO high that when I was reading that link I was honestly horrified that they would charge that much for people who have only 2 weeks of training to tutor kids.  People borrow against their homes for things like this, if it truly means it will help their children.  I just had a hard time swallowing that charging $2000 a week, with a mandatory 6 month commitment ($48,000  :w00t: ), could be justified when some centers are pairing students with staff that parents are assuming have vast amounts of training and knowledge but don't have more than a couple of weeks...and that those instructors may be getting paid very little compared to what is being charged.  But maybe those figures are way off base.  Maybe it isn't actually that high.

 

Yes, it is a business.  But businesses can be operated ethically and compassionately.  It did not seem that at least based on that link ethics and compassion were part of the model.  They are taking advantage of the deep concerns of parents.

 

But if it actually nets solid results, for those who can somehow swing the cost I could see how it would definitely be worth it.  I just wonder who's getting the bulk of the profits and just what that profit margin is.

 

For people like my friend, though, it is out of reach.  And she works full time.  And does not feel she can tutor her child herself.  It might have helped her a lot.  Its just out of reach at the moment.  

[MistyMountain]

Wow 2000 for a week for a minimum of 6 months!!!!! That is crazy high for tutoring. I had no idea it was that outrageous. I have gotten some of the manuals and it isn't super hard but for me it also wasn't easy to follow. I could start but it was hard to know what was good and it was hard to continue because I had to go searching for the book and rereading.

 

http://www.wyzant.com/This site has more reasonable tutors and some of the ones in my area work with those methods but the rates are more reasonable. They actually were priced high for me but not that high. Maybe that would be a better source for your friend.

[OneStepAtATime]

Thanks MistyM.  I will pass it along.  :)

[Minerva]

Just want to add that there is not necessarily a six month commitment with LMB. Maybe it depends on the center? No time commitment was ever required of us. They made recommendations based on our dd's test scores, and we decided how much time/money we could commit.  At the end of our month they recommended more time, but I felt I had learned enough to use LMB techniques at home, and there was no pressure to continue. I would hate for someone to discount LMB as an option based on the information that all centers require huge time commitments.

 

Also, I have met several people who have taken their workshops to be trained in their methods. The classes are short, relatively inexpensive, and give you the tools you need to use their materials confidently. This would allow you to teach your own children as well as tutor other kids (if you felt so inclined). It may be that you can find someone in your community who is LMB trained and can do more affordable tutoring or teach you the methods.

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Just want to add that there is not necessarily a six month commitment with LMB. Maybe it depends on the center? No time commitment was ever required of us. They made recommendations based on our dd's test scores, and we decided how much time/money we could commit.  At the end of our month they recommended more time, but I felt I had learned enough to use LMB techniques at home, and there was no pressure to continue. I would hate for someone to discount LMB as an option based on the information that all centers require huge time commitments.

 

Also, I have met several people who have taken their workshops to be trained in their methods. The classes are short, relatively inexpensive, and give you the tools you need to use their materials confidently. This would allow you to teach your own children as well as tutor other kids (if you felt so inclined). It may be that you can find someone in your community who is LMB trained and can do more affordable tutoring or teach you the methods.

Thank you.  I appreciate this perspective and will pass this along as well.  Perhaps it is only the center she is looking at that has such high costs and requirements... she lives near several cities.  Maybe another one has a better option or maybe she is misunderstanding what she was told and the posts I was reading from her link were biased.  Again, thank you so much for your perspective and experience.  

[Kanin]

I'm a former LMB tutor and I have mixed feelings about them. I was paid $13/hour (in a high cost-of-living area, even) and worked 40 hours a week, with 8 separate hours of tutoring in a day. It was really intense. I got two weeks of full time training and then started working with kids. Luckily I had a background in teaching and a degree related to teaching, so I was pretty prepared but... there were a lot of what I would call unqualified people there. On the other hand, there were also a lot of teachers working during their summer break. 

 

Aside from all that, I think success really depends on the child. I saw some kids go from not reading to reading fluently at grade level, and other kids stay pretty much where they were in the beginning, even after $90/hour tutoring for a whole summer. I'm generalizing, but I think the more ADHD kids, the more tactile, visual-spatial kids did less well. I just don't think they could pay attention for long enough to make the lessons worthwhile, and I also think their learning styles were not suited for LMB type instruction. If you have a very "type A" kid who is able to sit still and focus for a long period of time, then LMB may work for you. For the kids who really clicked... it was awesome and inspiring. For those that didn't mesh well, I thought it was a waste of money. Unfortunately many parents aren't as involved or as well-informed as the people on this board! If you don't know much about your child's specific needs, it's hard to make a good decision about whether the program is a good fit or not. 

Anyway, I'm rambling now! Hope this was a little informative.

[Kanin]

Also, you can learn the LMB methods but you can't become an "official" private LMB tutor. In fact, you have to sign a release when you work there that you will NOT go teach LMB stuff on your own! I know a woman who did do that, and she was sued by LMB. She won the case, but geez. That kind of secrecy makes me think they care too much about the money. 

[DeniseF]

My son, who is 7 1/4 years,  just completed 9 weeks at LMB last Friday.  Our experience was absolutely worth the money.  Most importantly, he made immense progress that I am convinced there is no way I could have accomplished in any near-term. And he LOVED going there, working his brains out every day!

 

I had been teaching him using OG methods (specifically Riggs Institute) and had gotten absolutely nowhere after almost 3 years.  In that same time his twin had begun reading at 4 and was reading lengthy chapter books shortly after turning 5.  I had a similar result with my older daughter.  I kept waiting for that magic moment when it would finally click for DS, but he could absolutely not recall the shapes of the letters and what sounds they made or what their names were.  Each time he encountered them it was like he was seeing them for the first time.  After about two years he grasped the letters and sounds and then I tried working with him on words.  If I gave him a word, he could do a decent job spelling it phonetically so I started thinking it was getting through to him, but no matter how many times I showed him the same word, there was absolutely no recognition, even if he'd read it previously in the same sentence.  I was coming to the conclusion that his brain just couldn't retain the image of the letters and couldn't connect the letters with the sound and hold all of that in his memory long enough to read a word.  It just wasn't getting any better, so I called a neuropsych who had a website with a great deal of good information on it.  He called me back, listened to my story and suggested that, rather than have him test my son, I should have LMB test him and he recommended working with them right away. He said if he's not reading at all by age 7, it needed to be remediated right away and that I could look into ADHD issues, etc, and get other testing later.  He also told me to read the Shalywiz book Overcoming Dyslexia.  (I already had DS in vision therapy with a COVD therapist, but the neuropsych said that is seldom the only thing going on).

 

One thing I discovered as I started reading online about dyslexia (not thru LMB)  is that a critical feature is that intervention needs to be intense and high frequency in order to get through to long term memory.  

 

I paid $295 for the testing (I happened to call during a sale time...it's usually $695).  I also bought the Seeing Stars manual because I was planning on doing it myself.   I knew he didn't have issues with phonemic awareness but that it was his ability to remember symbols and connect them with sounds that was the problem.  That's the Seeing Stars program.

 

DS' testing showed 86th percentile in Peabody Picture vocabulary test (which is a measure of receptive vocabulary) and 33% in word attack (so some of the OG stuff got through) but in actual reading, using quite a few different tests, he was in the 3rd percentile and other dramatically low numbers.  He had 4 sight words.  This was no surprise to me.  

 

When I read the Seeing Stars manual I started to learn how the LMB program stimulates the visual memory by having the student take a 'picture' of the word, hold it in his memory, repeat back the letters in order from his visual picture, answer questions about which letter he pictures is 3rd (for example), having the student manipulate the image in his mind e.g. "replace the 'm' in "home" with a 'p'..what does it say now?  By using this technique repeatedly, as part of a continuing sequence of activities each day over 4 hours, the student is able to improve their ability to hold on to the letters...more letters and for longer.  They call this Symbol Imagery and it is the driving factor, statistically, which determines the child's success in the Seeing Stars program.  I knew that was the key that my DS needed that he didn't have at all.

 

At the beginning of the program, my DS could barely hold on to 2 letters in his mind before forgetting them.  By the end, I've seen him routinely hold onto 6  letters and be able to manipulate them using his visual memory.  

 

At the beginning of the program, he had never read a single sentence in his life.  A few weeks in as he read his first sentence, he saw the period at the end of the sentence and asked what it was.  I'd never gotten that far with him for him even to know what it meant.

 

This Saturday I will get the results of his post-test but here's what I know, having seen it first-hand.  He can read first and second grade texts with accuracy, though very slowly.  He can manipulate words in his mind as I already described.  He has 200 sight words (he started with 4).  And best of all by far, at our Classical Conversations group on Monday he told the other kids "I can read now!"   The difference that has made to his internal world is enormous, especially with two siblings who are ridiculously voracious readers.  

 

The thing I forgot to mention earlier is that the main reason I decided I couldn't do this with my DS on my own is because I have not done a good job at all of being patient with him over the years.  I give myself an F- for my handling of his inability to read a given word after seeing it 1,000 times.  Seriously, I feel horrible but that is the truth.  So if I hadn't ruined our working relationship it might have been possible to do this using the book and spending 4 hours per day with him on it.  But as it was, I was just not a contender.  I also looked at WyzAnt for tutors and found they were all half the price of LMB (a person with dyslexia qualifications or reading specialist type person was $50/hour almost universally).  I even tried to hire one but she said she couldn't spend that much time with us.  My husband and I researched a lot online and found tons of ecstatic customers and only on negative report about underqualified summer help at LMB. 

 

Finally, my son, who has attention issues and I had been unable to get him focused on just about anything, LOVED working hard for 4 hours per day.  This is probably the biggest shock of all.  Their methods are really designed to work with a kid like my DS...they have very involved reward systems to keep the kids motivated and their time is highly structured so they aren't stuck doing one type of activity for more than 10 minutes at a time (there are 5 tasks per hour and they repeat the same sequence each of the 4 hours).  Before signing up for the program I told them he had undiagnosed ADHD and couldn't sit still for more than a minute and that I didn't think there was any way they could possibly be effective with him for 4 hours. I was wrong (so glad about that).

 

They also had an oversight group from San Diego that would review his progress once per week with the consultant assigned to him and twice they observed him reading live via videoconference to see him first hand and for the top level experts to confer with the consultant on the right course of action.

 

The main consultant working with him was absolutely top notch, extremely capable.  I learned a ton from watching her work with him.  b.t.w.  I went to the Oak Park center which is a Chicago suburb. 

 

It was a very tough decision to spend that immense amount of money but both my husband and I are very glad we did and feel it was worth it.

 

 

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Thank you for sharing, Denise.  I will pass on your response to my friend and hope that this thread will help others when making a decision of this magnitude. 

[PeterPan]

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/448834-lindamood-bell-programs-for-reading-comprehension/ Found some posts by Lamppost from Jan 2013 I thought we might find helpful to bring back up.  :)

 

 

Starting a new thread for this to avoid hijacking the previous one further. People were interested in these programs so I'll repost my explanation here & answer any questions. Here's the website: http://www.lindamoodbell.com/

And I'll quote myself from the other thread, where we were discussing the Seeing Stars program:

 

'lamp, on 10 Jan 2013 - 6:08 PM, said:

I've worked in one of their clinics and also in a reading intervention center at a school district where everyone was trained in the program. The materials are not really different from what a lot of phonics programs offer, but I'll try to explain the differences in the program that make it effective.

1. It's intense and relentless. It's meant to be done at their centers, which means a 55-minute one-on-one session each hour for 4 hours straight, rotating to a new clinician (teacher) for each hour. And every minute of that is WORK. They drilled into us that our students were paying more than $1 for every minute, so we had to make every minute count. There's a constant back-and-forth between student and clinician and both have to be on their toes. Here's an article about brain changes after going through the program, and it's not hard to believe given the intense, focused, and sustained nature of the program.

2. The focus on symbol imagery is (I think) the key to the program. That means students are trained so that when they hear sounds, like the word "cat" spoken aloud, they immediately and automatically call to mind a mental image of the letters c-a-t. (Worth noting that many people do this naturally anyway, but they're not the ones who struggle with reading!) Every student starts at the very beginning with "a" says /a/, and learns how to create mental images based on sounds heard . The pace varies greatly for individuals, but everybody has to go through each phoneme and they don't move on to syllables until phonemes are mastered. (But this is where I think Spalding has a leg up as Spalding teaches more of the rules whereas L-B tends to teach some rules, then claims certain words are an exception to "the rule".)

3. The approach to error-handling keeps both student & teacher focused. It also helps students to be more aware of their own errors and gives them tools to catch & correct their own mistakes. Here's how it would go if the student reads a sentence but says "sumble" when the text actually shows "stumble".

• Call attention to comprehension: Ask, "Does that make sense?" (Sometimes it will still make sense with the error they made and in that case you'd skip this question and just ask them to re-read the whole sentence containing the error.) The student reads the sentence again. Often they can catch which word they made an error on, but if they don't see it, only at that point would the teacher indicate to take another look at the word in question. If the student again makes an error reading this word in isolation, move to the next step.
• Respond to the response: Cover the word so the student doesn't just keep trying to read it. Given that the student said "sumble" instead of "stumble", say, "When you say 'sumble', what letter do you picture after the 's'?" The student would respond that they picture a "u" after the "s". (By the time the student has moved on from working with phonemes to reading sentences, they have already been working on symbol imagery exercises for a while and hopefully can answer correctly here. If they say anything other than "u" for this one, say "sumble" carefully while the student watches your mouth form the sounds, then prompt the student to say "sumble" again and see if they can come up with "u". If they can't, tell them what it would be and move to the next step but consider adding extra symbol imagery practice. )
• Uncover the word so the student can check their response to your question with the word on the page. They should see that there's actually a "t" after the "s" and can try again, hopefully getting to "stumble" at this point. If they make a new error, go back to step 2 and respond to the new response.

Finally let me give some examples of how symbol imagery can be developed. The most basic task is to show a phoneme card (like "a"), tell them the name of the letter(s) and what sound it makes, have them say the name & sound while tracing the letter(s) on the card with their finger. Then remove the card and have them write the letter(s) in the air, again saying the name of the letter(s) and sound. This same approach is used to learn sight words, but once the student has "written" the word in the air, you have them go through a series of tasks that forces them to continually image the word. For example, point to the third letter in the word- what is it? Now point to the last letter- say all the letters in backward order.

These kinds of tasks are also done with the syllable cards. A card in the CVC pack might show "fip".

• Hold up the card for several seconds while the student gets a mental image of the word.
• Take the card away and the student writes the letters in the air while saying the letter names. Then they read the word- "fip". (If they make an error, follow the error-handling technique above.)
• Double-check that they're still imaging the word by asking symbol imagery questions (what's the 3rd letter, etc.)
• If the student has been doing this for a while, you can start to have some fun at this point. Say, "Point to the 'f'. Now add an 'l' after the 'f'." The student "writes" in the new letter in the correct place and reads, "flip". You can come up with long chains of words (including nonsense words) in this way, with the student imaging, air-writing, and reading the whole way through.

fip
flip
frip
trip
trips
strips
stripped (once they've been introduced to -ed endings in the program)
strapped
strapping (again after -ing endings and multi-syllable have been introduced)
scrapping
scrapper
scapper
scatter
catter
chatter

It gets really fun (well, it did for me  ) with an advanced student who has learned all the affixes. It's really challenging to see how many real, not nonsense words I can come up with in a row to make a super long chain while staying within the rules of only changing, adding, or subtracting one letter or syllable at a time. One time I think I had about a 20-word chain with words up to 5 syllables in it and they were ALL real words. I really wish I'd written that one down. But throwing nonsense words in there is standard and very beneficial as well.

Hope that helps somebody!

 

 

 

It is miserably boring and repetitive. But it does get results if you can keep at it.

V/V is a very different program from S/S, much less clear-cut and much more sensitive to the skill of the teacher. It's easy to do it badly, in fact the video they use for training shows Nanci Bell (who created the program!) doing a V/V session pretty badly. Our trainer pointed out what wasn't working (although it's kinda obvious) and showed us how to be more effective. The biggest mistake is to keep asking and asking for more details in the image that take it further from the gestalt. You should only do the really intense questioning while the student is learning the process of visualization. Once you're confident that they're creating images automatically, ask a few questions to check that the images are matching the passage and move on.

As far as adapting the materials, in the clinics they have employees that don't usually run the one-on-one sessions but go around sitting in, listening, adjusting the lesson plans and pace. Everybody does start at the beginning, but one student could spend several weeks going through all the steps whereas another student may do that just for the first HOUR, then have their plan adjusted each hour the first few days until reaching a good instructional level.

 

 

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to find my notes from when I was trained in these programs. I had 40 hours of initial training plus another week of observing sessions and then being observed while teaching and getting feedback from an experienced clinician. Then I taught various clinics for several years.

As for how well a parent could deliver the program at home, that depends a lot on how invested you are in doing it. I wouldn't recommend the L-B programs unless you have a child who struggles with reading or comprehension. I'm not sure if I mentioned before, but it's not meant to be a beginning reading program- it's an intervention. Certainly the general idea of teaching a student to visualize more automatically could be used with any student, but actually trying to follow the program with a student who doesn't have some kind of learning disability is not something I'd recommend. If any of you are currently using V/V and need advice on how to pace it, I can try to help you out with that.

To answer Alessandra's questions:
1. I've never seen Orton-Gillingham in action, so I can't speak confidently to what the differences are. I do have a friend whose kid is getting private tutoring using O-G, and from what she's described to me it sounds similar with air-writing and such.
2. Err... if the videos you mention are the ones of Nanci Bell doing V/V sessions, I'd save my money. Basically the mistakes she's making involve questioning over and over ad nauseam long after it's clear the student is visualizing and verbalizing just fine. You don't need to keep doing that after the first session or two with a student who's doing well. I worked with a lot of kids on the autism spectrum who had to keep this up for a long time because they just were not able to answer even a really basic question like, "Did you picture a dog or a cat?" after reading a sentence like, "The dog ate the food." In cases like that, I'm not sure the program is effective anyway.
3. A typical V/V session- (I'll have to come back & edit in a bit to add this- have to go for now.)

 

 

Adding info about a typical V/V session:

A student who's in the first stages of the program might spend a whole session doing the Picture to Picture task, particularly if it's a young student. You give the child a picture (we used drawings that were made specifically for the program or photos from magazines that had a clear subject and background but not too much going on) and ask them to describe the picture as best they can. Generally their description won't be very effective in helping you get a good visual image of what it looks like, so ask choice/contrast questions like, "Is the duck walking on the ground or floating in some water?" Also, "structure words" are introduced to help the student check to see if they're describing thoroughly. Here they are: what, size, color, number, shape, where, movement, mood, background, perspective, when, sound. Obviously the "what" and the words that describe the "what" are the most important. Some pictures don't necessarily have a mood, for example. Lay out the structure words and have the student check to see that they've addressed them. Then summarize what the student has told you, starting with, "Your words made me picture...." Then have a look at the picture and compare it with the mental picture you formed while the student was describing it. If there are any discrepancies, say, "Oh, I didn't picture...."

A little further along, a session might start with one Picture to Picture task, then add in a word imaging task, and a single sentence imaging task. Then students move on to Sentence by Sentence imaging, which is basically reading a whole paragraph one sentence at a time, imaging as they go. The important thing here is to make change to the first picture rather than creating a whole new picture for each sentence- this is helpful in holding the gestalt of the paragraph. After Sentence by Sentence is pretty well mastered, students may start a session with one short paragraph in that style and then finish the session doing Whole Paragraph or Paragraph by Paragraph, which has the student read a paragraph at a time and verbalize their images following the reading. Especially in PxP, the teacher might just ask a few questions to check the images are in place rather than having the student go through the structure words.


I spent some time just now looking up past threads here on L-B and there's actually lots, I guess I had just never stumbled across any when browsing before. Here's something I found interesting: http://www.understandmore.com/WhyPeopleHaveProblems.htm
That's from a program called Ideachain that sounds very similar to V/V. The explanation I linked to is very similar to how you would describe V/V to a new student just starting out.


Whatever program you use, I think teaching students to visualize is a good approach. I had an adult student in her 40's once who had flown in from another state to do the V/V program. If I recall correctly, the situation was that she needed to pass a civil service exam of some kind and she just couldn't manage it due to her difficulties with reading comprehension. When she first started with me, she had the hardest time coming up with images that matched even one sentence at a time. She had a couple months of treatment, and by the end of the summer she could read pages of text at a time and visualize accurately, and more importantly she could discuss what she was reading because she was finally comprehending.

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Thanks for the above, OhE.  I think those were VERY informative.  Cool.  :)

[OneStepAtATime]

One thing I am finding frustrating is that LMB does no training, apparently, for LiPS.  I really think my friend's kid needs LiPS.  I had suggested she see if she could go through a training seminar since there are at least two centers in different cities she could drive to but neither one of us could find where they do one, anywhere.  There are some for SS and V/V but not LiPS.  She just does not want to work strictly off a manual.  She has no background in teaching her kids and no confidence in her ability to do so without some sort of training.  I wonder why there is no training for LiPS?

[PeterPan]

Sometimes a SLP will do it.

[OneStepAtATime]

I don't know if she has done any of that yet.  I will mention it.  Thanks.

 

Oh, and I mentioned all that you are doing with your ds OhE and she wanted to know if you would like to move in and tutor?   :lol:

[Lecka]

OneStep -- my son needed Lips and he did about 10 months at a university speech clinic.  He did not do Lips, but he got what he needed, and when I researched Lips, I saw a lot of similarities with his speech therapy, such that I felt like he was getting the same benefit from his speech therapy.  He had articulation needs also, and they really built an individual program for him.  It had a lot of the elements of Lips but it was not Lips and it did not have everything Lips has.  But -- I am very pleased with how it worked out for him.  

 

This was after two years in school district speech with no or extremely low progress -- but I still like them, it was his school speech therapist who recommended to me that I take him to the university clinic.  She was just not set up to design that program for him when he was qualifying for group sessions.  

[OneStepAtATime]

Hmmm.  I will pass on the University idea.  Thanks.

 

I wish she would just get on here and ask questions.  I think if she really put her mind to it and used the resources here, all of you with your wonderful brainstorming and experience, she might feel more comfortable trying to tutor herself.  She hates "social networks" but I can't seem to get her to see that this is not one of those.  :)

 

 

[Lecka]

My husband's insurance paid, but otherwise, the university speech clinic has a sliding scale based on income.  I would say it was better for us than me trying to do it ----- but also, my son had pretty severe and non-promptable articulation errors and was having signs of starting to shut down with attempts to speak ----- so really not necessarily the usual story of someone who needs LIPS.  (And Lips also says it is useful for children with difficult articulation problems.)  

 

But I think a private speech therapist also might be an option.

 

With my younger son -- I have met a private speech therapist who specializes in these kinds of issues, too, I met her through an autism training.  Not everyone specializes in it, but there are speech therapists who do.  The speech therapist I met is not local to us, though.  Locally -- I would say, the university clinic.  But if I lived in her area, I would say -- private speech therapist who specializes in this area, and hope to hear her name mentioned to me.  (This speech therapist did not specialize with autism, but was just getting/renewing some basic level of training, so she could be prepared to work with kids.  Like a lot of speech teachers around here, she worked part-time in a school district and part-time in a private practice.)  

[OneStepAtATime]

Thanks, Lecka!  I appreciate the feedback/perspective.  :)  I will pass it along.

[PeterPan]

I don't know if she has done any of that yet.  I will mention it.  Thanks.

 

Oh, and I mentioned all that you are doing with your ds OhE and she wanted to know if you would like to move in and tutor?   :lol:

If you live in a state with SUN, pay my plane ticket and I'll come!   :D

 

Ok, this is a total aside, but I think sometimes people get intimidated by "professionals" and don't realize what they CAN do.  I'm not saying someone should have to tutor their own dc if they don't want to.  I'm just saying sometimes it takes a person a while to *warm up* to that idea and that's ok.  

 

It might be something she grows into or something where she decides cutting back on work and doing it herself (complete with the learning curve) is the only way to get what she wants.  People don't realize what they're capable of. Desperation is a good motivator.

[OneStepAtATime]

If you live in a state with SUN, pay my plane ticket and I'll come!   :D

 

Ok, this is a total aside, but I think sometimes people get intimidated by "professionals" and don't realize what they CAN do.  I'm not saying someone should have to tutor their own dc if they don't want to.  I'm just saying sometimes it takes a person a while to *warm up* to that idea and that's ok.  

 

It might be something she grows into or something where she decides cutting back on work and doing it herself (complete with the learning curve) is the only way to get what she wants.  People don't realize what they're capable of. Desperation is a good motivator.

She and I don't live near each other, haven't for years actually.  But she does live in a sunny area.  Hey, but if you are relocating to become someone's live in tutor I get first dibs!   :laugh:

 

That last sentence...sooooooo true!!!!!   :hurray:

[merry gardens]

One thing I am finding frustrating is that LMB does no training, apparently, for LiPS.  I really think my friend's kid needs LiPS.  I had suggested she see if she could go through a training seminar since there are at least two centers in different cities she could drive to but neither one of us could find where they do one, anywhere.  There are some for SS and V/V but not LiPS.  She just does not want to work strictly off a manual.  She has no background in teaching her kids and no confidence in her ability to do so without some sort of training.  I wonder why there is no training for LiPS?

 

They offer LiPS training. It's a longer training process ( 3 days vs 2 days for their other programs) and they don't offer it each and every time, (which is true for some of their other programs as well.) The training sessions located by their main offices in San Luis Obispo usually include it, as well as several other locations. If your friend is looking in the Midwest,  there's one in Kansas City March 25-27, 2015 and several other places.  The earliest seems to be in Washington in January. It's not so easy to find the training workshops on their website, but if you want to look for it, go to lindamoodbell.com and click on professional development.  Then click on "scheduled workshops" towards the bottom and start scanning through the workshop locations. Click on those to see if the LiPS training is offered at that time.  If it's offered the LiPS program is shown in a gold box under "available workshops".

 

I would love to go to their formal training sessions, but I'm already past needing that for teaching my son.  If it had been nearby me when I needed it, I'd have done it. I've considered it a lot. If I ever decide to tutor professionally, I'd be able to justify spending the money. It's just hard as a homeschooler because it's hard to homeschool while travelling for professional development workshops.