AAR vs. Gander Mtn's Seeing Stars, LiPS, & V/V

[MeganW]

My kids have known letter names & the main sounds each letter makes for ages, we just aren't making much progress with the reading. Due to some possible as-yet-undiagnosed learning issues (dyslexia, processing issues, visual issues, apraxia), it has been suggested that we consider the Gander Mtn stuff. But we won't know until we are a little further down the road exactly what our learning issues are, so I need to just cover all the bases in the meantime. (We can't test for learning stuff yet - long explanation for why, not relevant to this post.)

 

Any thoughts about how AAR compares to the Gander Mtn products?? If this ONE program does the exact same thing as the THREE GM products, I need to just do AAR for time & efficiency purposes.

- Which is EASIER to implement (ie scripted is my thing!)? Do they cover the same things?

- Which is FASTER each day? We do a LOT of therapy exercises that take focus & concentration, so I really need something that is just going to get 'er done and help us keep moving forward.

- Is one more fun/less painful than the other?

 

Or am I comparing apples and oranges?

 

THANKS!!!

 

Copied from their websites:

 

AAR: "Level Pre-1 for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and it focuses on what we call the Big Five Skills. These five fundamental pre-reading skills include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, listening comprehension, and motivation to read. It is this specific set of skills that helps pre-readers understand the basics of language and how it works, preparing them to learn to read."

 

 

GM SS: "Seeing Stars is a sequential program of instruction to develop mental imagery for letters in words, as a base for reading and spelling.

The process-based instruction of Seeing Stars teaches the student to create mental imagery for letters within words, and to connect that imagery to the sounds of language. This visual processing of written sounds and symbols is known as symbol imagery—an essential skill that underlies fluent reading and accurate spelling."

 

GM LiPS: "The LiPS® Program develops phonemic awareness for competence in reading, spelling, and speech. Weak phonemic awareness can cause problems in spelling and decoding, when students may add, omit, substitute, or reverse sounds and letters within words."

 

GM VV: "Visualizing and Verbalizing (V/V) is a learning program that helps students improve reading comprehension, language comprehension, and higher order thinking skills by developing the ability to create mental imagery for the language they read and hear, and to create an imaged gestalt – imagery for the big picture, or whole. This mental imagery for language is called concept imagery, and it is essential to comprehension skills."

[MeganW]

anyone??

[Lori in MS]

I would like to know this too.

[prairiegirl]

I can't help you much as I only know about LiPS. From my experience with that program, I don't think it is what you need (especially considering the price of it.) I used it with my youngest. She did not know her letter sounds at all and had little phonemic awareness. LiPS helped her a great deal. I love this program. It is multi-sensory and helps the child be aware of the letter sound by concentrating on where the lips, tongue, etc. are when making that sound. They give the sounds different names--tongue coolers, lip poppers. This worked amazingly with my dd but I think it might confuse your child and be redundant seeing that they already know their sounds. If phonemic awareness is their problem, I think there would be better--and cheaper--ways of solving it.

[MeganW]

thanks