Lindamood-Bell programs for reading & comprehension

[lamppost]

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:

 

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".

1. 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.
   
2. 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. )
   
3. 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".

1. Hold up the card for several seconds while the student gets a mental image of the word.
   
2. 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.)
   
3. Double-check that they're still imaging the word by asking symbol imagery questions (what's the 3rd letter, etc.)
   
4. 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 :blush: ) 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!

[FairProspects]

Ok, my problem with LMB products in the past (we did parts of V/V) is that for 2E kids, it is so repetitive as to bore them stiff before they can get any good use out of the strategies. Have you found any ways to adapt the materials for kids who pick up on concepts quickly, but are dyslexic?

 

IE, I do NOT want to use S/S if we are going to have repeat of our experience with V/V. I think part of this problem is that LMB instructions insist that all kids start at the beginning and go through all steps repeatedly, which is pretty much terrible advice for 2Es. I'm not just picking on LMB, we have had this problem with Barton, a bit with REWARDS, & to a lesser extent AAS at the beginning as well.

[lamppost]

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.

[FairProspects]

Of course, if you know what you are doing, that would probably be easy to move a student along. I'm just trying to determine how well, I as a parent can do with just the manual at home.

[merry gardens]

I've used portions of 3 LMB reading programs, starting with LiPS. From LiPS I moved to Barton, (which is not from LMB) but I also use Seeing Stars workbooks and some Visualizing&Verbalizing materials too. I read and studied all three manuals. I watched training videos but never attended any of the conferences, although I'm on the mailing list and see they have workshops offered to school teachers. I see that the op mentioned she worked at one at a LMB center, so she's obviously very familiar with how the methods are used at the centers, but they can be done slighly differently too.

 

 

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.

 

That's how their clinics may do it, but it doesn't have to be done that way. They offer clinics to school teachers and hold workshops, and obviously most public school teachers won't be able to put in that type of intense one-on-one instruction for children. Some of the materials can also be used in less frequent one-on-one therapy sessions. LiPS was developed by a slp, and it can be done by speech therapists or others outside of LMB clinics. LiPS is closer to therapy than just a reading program.

[Alessandra]

Lamppost -- thank you for starting this thread!

 

May I ask you some questions about Visualizing and Verbalizing? What goes on in a typical session?

 

I have the workbooks and the Teacher's Manual; we have begun at grade 3, as suggested in the Manual, and this seem to be a good level for my dd. I would love to know more about the most common mistakes you mentioned. Oh, I would love to take some training, but there is nothing at all near me for the next year. The videos sound great, but at $87 per video -- whew, that is expensive. Maybe I should ask if they have a rental program!? (Such as streaming to your house for 48 hours....)

 

Also, I am just curious -- how is Seeing Stars different from Orton-Gillingham types of programs?

[MistyMountain]

.

[Χά�ων]

Of course, if you know what you are doing, that would probably be easy to move a student along. I'm just trying to determine how well, I as a parent can do with just the manual at home.

 

 

This is my concern as well.

[lamppost]

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.)

[Alessandra]

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.)

 

I'm rushing now too, so I 'll just reply briefly for now.

 

Thank you for the tip about the videos. I have looked at some of the LMB videos on you tube (lectures, not sample classes) and wasn't too impressed, so I am glad to hear the videos on the website are not must-haves.

 

My dd is an excellent decoder, but does have serious comprehension difficulties. V & V is helping, but I think I need to reread the instructor guide and devote more hours each and every day to comprehension. So much depends on it!

[lamppost]

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.

[Alessandra]

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.understan...aveProblems.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.

 

 

This is so helpful! I think I was pretty good on the picture to picture part, but the part bolded above -- making CHANGES to the original picture... I need to work on this. To use the movie analogy, I need to move from thinking of an old Thomas Edison era movie with jerky transitions to something more free flowing. Dd is extremely visual, not that logical/analytical; I am the opposite. But V&V is a great program for her, as it uses her strengths to help with her weaker areas.

 

I was inspired by the earlier threads here and started rereading the instructor guide. I am thinking that maybe I should order the newest edition, which is more scripted than the older editions. I know that it was very helpful to be told to say, "I'm not picturing...," rather than, "You didn't tell me...."

 

Thank you SO MUCH for your help!!!!!!!!

 

ETA Thx for the IdeaChain link -- I will enjoy looking at it more thoroughly.