Lindamood-Bell

[maize]

Who here has experience with Lindamood-Bell tutoring? Can you tell me about it?

[jboo]

I have a friend who used it for her extremely dyslexic child. 

Generally speaking, it's a last ditch effort to remediate dyslexia, because it is  so *very* expensive and takes so much time. Intensive tutoring, maybe two hours a day for weeks. She says she could've bought another house with what she spent, but on the other hand, now she has a child who can read - not super well, but enough that he's functional.

[prairiewindmomma]

It's cheaper to be trained than to pay for the tutoring yourself (which was relevant to us because we've gotten no state funding ever). Also, a lot of the materials are available used on amazon.  

Seeing Stars uses symbol imagery (creating mental images) as a means of remembering sounds and phonemic patterns.  The materials remind me of a blend of Spelling Power (Print, Say, Write in Air--that early multi-method of interacting) and Math-U-See: black and white, simple layout on pages, limited amount of material per page.

Visualizing and Verbalizing and the other materials are much the same---trying to strengthen symbol imagery using a multi-sensory approach.

It's a good fit if a kid can already decode and knows their sight words---and the fundamental gap is in understanding what is being read or in concept imagery, it's a great program. If your kid is struggling to decode, then this is not the program for them, imo.

 

[Tanager]

This may be helpful - “ORTON-GILLINGHAM COMPARED TO LiPS (LINDAMOOD PHONEME SEQUENCING PROGRAM)”

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ab038ed8ab7228b5bbe130d/t/5c9120a4c83025f29e67a3c8/1553014949791/Web+OG+v+LiPS.pdf

[maize]

I have a ten year old with severe dyslexia.  It isn't helped by the fact the he still struggles with speech articulation in spite of years of speech therapy. I'm trying to figure out potential next steps for him.

[Farrar]

I had a friend who did Lindamood Bell tutoring and a couple of students who used it eons ago. My overall impression is that it's not better than Barton per se. However, I think some kids seem to do better with it. Maybe because of the specific tutors? But maybe the approach. It always seemed to me like there was a bit of speech language pathologist work happening with Lindamood Bell.

[prairiewindmomma]

Have you done deep educational testing with the kid? How’s the working memory and visual processing? What are their ran/ras or DIBELS scores like? Auditory processing? Any ADHD in the mix also that isn’t being addressed? Severe dyslexia is such a wide open umbrella term, imo, that it doesn’t precisely pinpoint deficits.

Honestly, in your shoes, I would pick PeterPan’s brain, especially if you think there’s some neurodivergent thinking going on as well. She’s done so well at getting deep into the weeds to figure out where the gaps are.

[Lecka]

I also think severe dyslexia in a ten-year-old can mean a lot of different things.

Overall it means a ten-year-old who is not reading like expected for their age.  But that is a lot more broad then. 6- or 7-year-old.  
 

A lot of times kids in this situation will have a lot of reading skills and they aren’t necessarily fitting into what would be needed for a younger child.  
 

I don’t know what his speech sounds are or how many he has, but the Lindamood Bell program about speech sounds is LIPS.  It is very highly regarded.  I saw samples at one time and it was, overall, similar to what my son was doing in speech therapy.  This is my older son.  
 

LIPS is really specific to speech sounds and linking hearing speech sounds to producing speech sounds, and adding a visual that relates to what the mouth is doing.  That is my memory.

 

On the other hand my younger son (14 now) just had some updated testing, he has autism, he has borderline IQ, he is reading well for himself but it’s not a regular reading level.  He can read Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  He can read all 1- and 2-syllable words and stumbles on a lot of (most) 3-syllable words.  He has got auditory processing issues etc and that is just not something we are going to be able to drill away.  He does continue to make slow progress, though.  
 

Anyway, he still has speech goals for that pesky r and next year they are basically dropping it in favor of more self-advocacy skills, and I think it’s a good idea.  That pesky r is not a hill to die on.

 

There’s a big extreme there between my two sons and I think testing goes a long way in finding an answer.

 

If it is speech sounds you are looking at — it is worth looking at LIPS and seeing what you can find.  
 

There is an alternative to LIPS as well, that iirc is mentioned as being for students who don’t pass the Barton screening, and it can be found on the Barton website.  It was coming out a little later than when my older son was at that level, so I do not know as much about it.  
 

I do remember it being an alternative to LIPS where it was cheaper and had clearer instructions.

 

 

 

 

[Lecka]

https://bartonreading.com/student-result/#sf
 

I don’t know if this is a direct link, but it is on the page about “what if a student fails the Barton screening.”

 

Then it mentions LIPS — which is a Lindamood Bell program.  And the alternative program is Foundations in Sounds.

 

If he is having problems at this level, is doing poorly on Dibels stuff like sounding out easy/basic nonsense words, etc, this is a level he might need.

 

And it can go along with speech articulation.  
 

LIPS was also developed as a speech therapy program to help with speech sounds, so there is hope it could help with speech sounds, too.  
 

But it all depends on what is going on with him and his individual needs.  
 

Good luck, I hope you find something that will really work for him and he makes good progress!!!!!!!!!!

[Lecka]

For more about my older son with the LIPS/Foundation in Sounds level of need….

 

For him it was auditory discrimination aka telling apart speech sounds.  Pretty important for articulation if that is the reason (or a reason) that articulation is a problem.

Did he hear a “t” or a “p” in a word?  No idea, no way to know, no way to tell them apart.

What about blends, what’s the difference between the words fog, frog, and flog?  No idea, no way to know, no way to tell them apart.  They all sound the same.  
 

(And this makes it hard to learn letters and associate letter sounds with letters, because they sound too similar.) 
 

He had a certain set of consonants and a set of blends, that he couldn’t tell apart, and they corresponded to his speech sounds in speech therapy.