Ideachain Lindamood-Bell - Readind Comp

[pioneergirl]

Stumbled upon this board, thankfully!

 

I would like feedback from people who have used either ideachain or Lindamood-bell OR any other related programs in the home. I live in Idaho and there is really not much of this type of support available.

 

Background: My 12 y/o son was was recently diagnosed with ADD-PI, GAD, and LD-NOS. Also, let me say that he is highly intelligent; he is in a self contained GT program for English and Social Studies and actually attends another school for his math and science which are all high school level courses. He gets A's in science and social studies, B in math, and usually DorF in English -- which prompted my recent testing as I've always suspected ADD. However, he FINALLY verbalized to me that in English - the books they read in there "don't explain anything to [him] and there are no pictures". As a result of the testing, I learned that his comprehension is way below grade level (3rd grade apparantly - not sure I totally agree there; I'd say 5-6th but poor inference to relationships in stories) and at grade level for writing and such. His working memory is very poor and he cannot answer simple questions about a story or chapters he's just read from any fiction book. Really odd. The recommendations I was given was to provide scaffolding for him on his writing assignments/essays and provide more practice opportunities. Well, I just don't quite know where to go from here.....

 

I can also say that he won't look forward to doing any additional "work" especially when it comes to the subject of reading. I am a smart lady and feel that I would be able to take a that V/V manual and apply the "instruction" with the workbooks - if someone else has done this please let me know how successful you were and describe your approach and where you think you'd start with my child based on info above; I saw samples of workbooks online at publisher site; but there are no material examples to view of the ideachain material (which is a red flag to me). But, I'd love to hear anyone's experience with Ideachain for a child that may have similarities to mine? Grade level?? Was the material adequate. I can say that for him, a straight forward, simplified approach with short "bursts" would work best; he will not be able to sit for hours on end.

 

Thanks -- I don't want to write too much! I'll start here....:)

[rafiki]

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[ElizabethB]

I would rule out a phonics problem before spending money on an expensive program like that.

 

You can give him my the NRRF reading grade level test, my 8th, 10th and 12th grade test if he passes level 6 on the NRRF test, and the MWIA level II. If he reads the Phonetic words more than 15% slower than the Holistic words on the MWIA or misses more than 1 word on either section of the MWIA, some phonics remediation may do the trick.

 

Many of my remedial students have supposedly had comprehension problems, but they actually had subtle decoding problems, their comprehension improved when their reading abilities improved.

 

Here are the tests you can use, they are all free:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/readinggradeleve.html

[pioneergirl]

Thank you Michelle and Elizabeth....I want to acknowledge your responses. I need to take a chunk of quite time to really read through them and research some of the items you mentioned. (it might be difficult this week; since all kids are off school!). I hope that if I ask questions, you'll be there. I understand though it's a busy week! Will check back in soon.

[merry gardens]

Stumbled upon this board, thankfully!

 

I would like feedback from people who have used either ideachain or Lindamood-bell OR any other related programs in the home. I live in Idaho and there is really not much of this type of support available.

 

Background: My 12 y/o son was was recently diagnosed with ADD-PI, GAD, and LD-NOS. Also, let me say that he is highly intelligent; he is in a self contained GT program for English and Social Studies and actually attends another school for his math and science which are all high school level courses. He gets A's in science and social studies, B in math, and usually DorF in English -- which prompted my recent testing as I've always suspected ADD. However, he FINALLY verbalized to me that in English - the books they read in there "don't explain anything to [him] and there are no pictures". As a result of the testing, I learned that his comprehension is way below grade level (3rd grade apparantly - not sure I totally agree there; I'd say 5-6th but poor inference to relationships in stories) and at grade level for writing and such. His working memory is very poor and he cannot answer simple questions about a story or chapters he's just read from any fiction book. Really odd. The recommendations I was given was to provide scaffolding for him on his writing assignments/essays and provide more practice opportunities. Well, I just don't quite know where to go from here.....

 

I can also say that he won't look forward to doing any additional "work" especially when it comes to the subject of reading. I am a smart lady and feel that I would be able to take a that V/V manual and apply the "instruction" with the workbooks - if someone else has done this please let me know how successful you were and describe your approach and where you think you'd start with my child based on info above; I saw samples of workbooks online at publisher site; but there are no material examples to view of the ideachain material (which is a red flag to me). But, I'd love to hear anyone's experience with Ideachain for a child that may have similarities to mine? Grade level?? Was the material adequate. I can say that for him, a straight forward, simplified approach with short "bursts" would work best; he will not be able to sit for hours on end.

 

Thanks -- I don't want to write too much! I'll start here....:)

Hello and welcome!

 

I've used/use both IdeaChain and V&V. They are both good programs. They have strong similarities, and some differences. Both are based off the same research.

 

I had an older V&V manual when I decided to go with IdeaChain. The v&v manual alone could be enough--if you want to create and pull together your own materials. I was tryng to do that when learned about IC. IC pulls the materials and teaching manual together in a scripted form and with phone support from the developer. About your concerns of not seeing samples, just showing a page or two doesn't explain the program adequately, but showing enough of it to explain the program adequately almost amounts to "giving it away for free". You absolutely won't just sit at it for six hours at a time. You'll engage with your child and share with each what picture each other's words are creating in each other's minds. IC was really a positive experience and I did it with three of my dc. I also liked and benefited from the phone support that the developer of IC provides to people who buy the program from her.

 

IdeaChain ends once the visualization skills have been developed, while v&v continues to work on those skills on paragraphs and stories using workbooks and text books indefinately. If you are worried about a negative attitude from your son about more reading, IdeaChain might be a good program for your son. There really is very little reading in it at all. It's really much more forming a mental picture from words--basically creating your own personal illustrations for the story. IdeaChain stops once that skill is developed to the sentence level. V&v can go on for years. We finished IdeaChain in less than half a year, and we now use some of v&v's workbooks for history and reading.

 

By using IC I learned that my child with the biggest reading problems--including de-coding problems--didn't have any problem picturing words in his mind, but he does have some problems getting what is in his mind out in more descriptive words. Good writing starts with that.

 

We're now using a scaffolding approach to writing using a different manual from an entirely different place (Landmark Schools). The V&V workbooks we use do have writing portions, but I wouldn't call it a scaffolded approach to writing.

 

I like V&V too, but I really liked IC.