Thoughts from LIPS teachers

How is he supposed to know what the difference is? (Personally I think one legit use of Socratic “discovery” is to show the person the next step if they’ve done all the attempts at personal discovery possible. I know when I’ve tried, but I’m unable to “discover” something I’m totally primed to remember and comprehend what somebody tells me — as if the “hole” for discovering it has opened, and it doesn’t matte rwhether the discovery comes frm me or an outside source.)

Can he feel that he’s blocking the sound wiht the ‘k’? As if the sound were rolling down a hill on his bike and then hit the brakes with the back of his tongue?

Since working with blocks is a phoneme activity, it is designed to segment and blend phonemes. Lots of kids don’t connect the concept of vowel versus consonant in phonemic activities. The concept becomes important in phonics activities (when letters are added to the mix).

Can your son see that “ee” is one sound, /e/ or does he put up two letters for “ee”? (This is also a common mistake for kids who know the spelling for the long-e sound can sometimes be with two ee’s.)

I probably need to read your post again to really understand what he’s doing. I’m not getting a very clear picture of the task versus his response…so forgive me if I’m totally off-base.

When kids are having problems making the connection between the sound/symbol and placement of their articulators in their mouth I move back to the pictures and the LABELS of the cognate pairs and the pictures and LABELS of the vowels using a mirror and having them watch me as my tongue moves in positions in my mouth. He may be able to grasp looking at the pictures and making the sound match the picture and using the labels as he moves from a smiley vowel (ee) to a tongue scraper (k). I personally think she moved him way too fast and made assumptions based on his performance on the PAT. She shound move back to the pictures and labels and to make sure that he has the cognate pairs down cold including the labels and placement within his mouth before she moves to the vowels pictures, labels and placement within his mouth.

On a side note..My daughter is testing out in the high average range to +1.5 SD range in areas that require auditory attention. This is fantastic news because she is making gains inspite of her hearing impairment and ADD. We have been doing meds for 2 years now and the gains she has made have been incredible. We still have problems with her vocabulary and dyslexia but she is testing out with a 104 on the verbal and 119 on the performance area. There is still a 15 point split but at least we have the split back. Before meds the split was gone because she had lost her ability to focus to show her strengths. We started meds two summers ago with our daughter when she was 11. I started working with her doing LIPS when she was 9 and it was a rough road but we made it……You may want to try meds in the summer as he has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You wrote:
> She was using the
> cubes and he could put two different colors for eek. He
> could switch the constanant and even the vowel. He couldn’t
> seem to get that there was one vowel. They had already done
> the vowel circle. He could identify how many sounds fine but
> couldn’t seem to get that the ee was a vowel sound and k was
> not. I saw her take him back through it several times and
> each time at the end he told her that both ee and k were
> vowel sounds.
>

I think I’ve got a picture of the lesson. Using cubes: He’s segmenting fine, he’s shifting sounds fine, he’s blending fine. Auditorally, he’s doing well in the lesson. He’s hearing the sounds and responding to them. GREAT!

What isn’t happening: He’s not ‘hooked’ to the visual of vowels versus consonants—that may come first before the auditory ‘hook.’ I would do some making words activities using closed vowel sounds. (But then, I do that while I’m introducing consonants and vowels…right away, I want them reading something.)

I sometimes use one color of block—such as green—for vowel sounds when I want to help them distinguish (or categorize) the sounds. Let the student pick their favorite color for vowels.

I hope your teacher can remember that a student’s failure to achieve instructional objectives is the responsibility of the instructor—every time…always. I live by that and learned it from an incredible teaching mentor.

They had just gone over the vowel circle and I think she expected him to apply it to the cubes.

Beth

You have down exactly what is going on. I like your idea of choosing a color to represent a vowel. I will see if he can do that when I practice with him tonight.

I agree with you about the teacher’s responsibility. I talked to her last night (she called me) and she had called Lindamood Bell for ideas. They said to lay off the labels when doing the blocks for awhile. My main concern is that she seems to see her reputation tied up with being successful and I am afraid that my less than average child may be a challenge to that. My son is a really difficult case (multiple problems) and the people who have worked with him successfully are those who really are interested in figuring out what works for him.

Beth

I actually don’t think this is where the problem is–more like what Susan said. He gets it in the context you speak of.

I did take the school ADD forms to his pediatrician yesterday. He wants us to see a neurologist first. He wants to make sure nothing else is going on. Unlike your child, my son actually has a higher verbal IQ. He has a couple of very depressed subscores on the performance test (picture completion and object assembly).

Beth

The difference between vowels and consonants is pretty fuzzy — ask any linguist or read any beginning linguistics text.
OK, ee is an open-mouth sound and k is a stop, so there is a pretty strong difference there. But please explain m, n, r, l, w, and y to me.
In fact, w is a quick oo sound sliding into the next vowel, and y is a quick ee sound sliding into the next vowel. The fact that these are called consonants in English is more a matter of history and convenience than of actual spech production.
I wouldn’t worry about a student not being able to specify vowel versus consonant, as long as he can say the sounds clearly and identify the symbols. Naming can come later.
Some students, especially the logical rule-based thinkers (who are often highly intelligent and very good at math and science, and even foreign languages etc!) have difficulties with the fuzziness of language definitions (as above). In this case you can simply teach directly — memorize that vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y (when it comes in the middle or at the end of a syllable, and makes a sound of e or i), and memorize the three or four common sounds for each vowel plus diphthongs: a as in apple, apron, arm; e as in eagle, elephant, earth; etcetera. The logical and rule-based type of student can work *back* from this to the fact that vowels are mouth-unobstructed continuants but consonants involve some sort of stop or closure or break.

I strongly agree with Victoria - I wouldn’t get all hung up about his noting the distinction between a vowel and a consonant if he’s doing the auditory part just fine. If he’s able to hear two sounds in eek, that’s great. If he’s able to use the blocks to represent the changes properly, that’s wonderful. Some kids really struggle with that. I’d have no problem letting him memorize the vowels - he can use the vowel circle to memorize the vowel sounds.

I’m wondering if the teacher is belaboring the point. That often happens with a teacher who hasn’t done LIPS very long or who gets stuck in a rut. When something’s not working, try different ways. One doesn’t need to be married to the order of the LIPS program. I’ve had kids who’ve struggled so much with the blocks component that I’ve had to combine it with the visual tiles before they’ve been able to then back up and do it just auditorally with blocks alone.

Normally the process would be to increase difficulty with blocks, while overlapping with easy tiles. With some kids, the reverse is true.

Once you get to multisyllable work, you’ll find some kids unable to hear accents. Or unable to segment syllables by sound. You know what? If they really don’t get it, then add something visual so they can work for awhile in their strong suit before backtracking to just the auditory signals. Often that’s what makes them get it. It’s really OK to not follow the LIPS program in a rigid fashion.

I think she has done LIPS for about a year. But I wonder if it isn’t orientation as well. I called an audiologist who worked with my son doing IM for advice—wondering why he might be having trouble. She is getting trained in LIPS next month. She immed. suggested dropping the vowel labels too. I’m afraid that the tutor has a very prescribed way of approaching the program—she has worked in a pilot program in the public school—and my son hasn’t read the manual!!

Beth

When I first read your post I thought he wasn’t making the connection to the symbol/sound shifts visually and auditorially as he wasn’t feeling the position changes in his mouth perhaps because he was shaky on knowing what the cognate pairs were and how they were different from vowels.

It is hard to figure out where he is hanging up without having him right in front of me but I will usually go back in the hierarchy until I find the missing link. I have seen what you are describing to adults in phonetics classes that aren’t grasping phonetics, understanding the vowels, cognate pairs, syllabication and accent. Instead of blocks I have found success with a white board and a dry erase marker. I have them write the symbols down as they hear them to help them make the distinctions between consonants and vowels and I definitely have them feeling where the vowels and consonants are both visually by seeing where the sounds are coming from in their mouth and feeling where they are in their mouth. I have found that blocks can be very frustrating and abstract for some people. They have to see the old familiar symbols and as I move them around once more with “feeling”, they start to grasp the difference between vowels and consonants„ syllables and accent. It is definitely a line upon line, precept upon precept process. Good luck to you and your son.

I’m glad your instructor called LMB. Their advice is (as expected) wonderful! There is plenty of time for labeling sounds as vowels and consonants when word building skills are done in a visual, phonics format (on whiteboards, with little tiles, with cards, etc.).

I do like using one block color for vowels when tracking with some children (even though LMB doesn’t suggest it), because it starts them thinking about categories of sounds—sets one group of sounds apart.

Some teachers do get hung up on teaching labels; it’s just a style of thinking and working, and people don’t always realize they are doing it, or that they are teaching the surface details rather than the in-depth structure. Sometimes the teacher finds it as dull and frustrating as the student, but feels that it’s vitally important to cover all the material. Try talking to your tutor about just making sure he can say the sounds and not worrying too much about naming or categorizing them for a while.It *can* be helpful to come back to labels and categorization later, so don’t drop the topic completely yet.

The tutor started over today at the beginning like she does with young children and those mentally challenged. My son was getting it this way. I honestly think the real problem, having observed today, is that she wasn’t spending sufficient time on feeling the sounds. This is the strength of the LIPS program and for him I think it seemed like just more things to memorize—lip poppers, tongue tappers.

She only got through three sets of constanants—the lip poppers, tongue tappers, and skinny air, and three vowels. She said he will never be caught up at this rate by fall, which clearly bothers her. But he wasn’t learning at all the other way so we may just have to live with it. I do have an audiologist who my son successfully did IM with this spring who is being trained in Lindamood this summer. The slt will be back teaching full time.

What was interesting with my son is that when they were doing the blocks this time, he volunteered that “ee” was a vowel. It was like it was clinking for him. Part of me thinks (hopes) that once he gets the basic approach down, he will move much faster.

I think she basically misjudged the seriousness of his difficulties—he tests so normal now in many areas (blending, segmenting, sight words) but we have worked so hard to get him there.

Thanks for all the help.

Beth

Thanks for the cheerful news.

This is exactly a point that I’ve been trying to recommend for a long time — there is absolutely no value in a fast mistake! Sure, *I* can finish the program over the summer, but what value does the *student* get out of that? Slow down and get it right first, then work on speed later. The tortoise and hare rule of life.

With children who are basically Pre-Primer, Pre-primmer, or Grade 1 level readers, I will often do a different sequence: Introduce three consonant pairs (p/b, t/d, k/g) and two vowel sounds (usually smile /i/ and open /o/) and then track and build words (tiles, cards, whatever) with those sounds. I try to fully develop the student’s feel for the sounds in the mouth, label (popper, tapper, etc.) and then hook to the grapheme (letter for that sound.) I also do some word reading of things I’ve prepared that support those sounds in a CVC pattern. I then move through and introduce another consonant pair and two vowel sounds: Usually f/v and smile /a/.

I’m not in a hurry to move onward until the student can read and spell using those sounds. If tracking isn’t coming along at the same pace, I’m patient and keep going with 2- and 3-sounds only while introducing new consonant pairs and vowels.

I think some practioners put more emphasis on tracking than reading. Reading is, after all, the goal. If students can move sounds around with a visual cue (letters) while producing accurate sounds for the letters, fine by me. I am not de-emphasizing phonemic awareness, just balancing the process between auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and visual channels.

Stay with your instincts and talk with your child about how he/she feels. I get my best instructional clues from my students.

I’d say that I follow the same pattern as Susan Long in beginning the LIPS program. But I also begin incorporating Seeing Stars as part of the program as soon as I have three consonant pairs and three vowel sounds (I choose /ee//o//oo/ usually as the first ones). I find that often a child who’s struggling with the sounds in LIPS will get them when they start using them for Seeing Stars.

and what I was trying to say in my posts….but I didn’t do a very good job….at it….that he needed to feel and see where the sounds were coming from in his mouth and the she needed to go back in the hierarchy to find out what he wasn’t getting. He will probably get it quicker than she is estimating, as I have seen that once they start to make the connections they generalize the sounds and eventually take off.

I think you are right about getting it quicker too. He does understand a lot of things but wasn’t getting the feeling in the mouth part.

BTW, I think LIPS is really a neat way to teach reading.

Beth

How would you use Seeing Stars at this point? I have the manual so could do it at home, if tutor doesn’t want to use it this early on. I know I have auditory weaknesses but I rely on my vision to compenstate. I also know that my son does not automatically see letters in his head.

Beth

Well, Victoria I have always believed you about the slow and steady part but what I saw with my son and LIPS is that the wrong pace can cause more problems than just not mastery. The tutor, in my book, was starting to create learned helplessness (which she thought was the reason why he was having problem) because he just was incapable of succeeding.

Thanks for everyone’s comments. You all helped me feel like I wasn’t nuts.

Beth

Hi Joan,

I have the Seeing Stars manual but have used SPIRE materials for a few years and have liked them very much. I like Sheila Edmands’ (SPIRE author/publisher) scope and sequence but put together my own lesson plans per the needs of students.

Maybe this summer I’ll have an opportunity to review Stars. I like having the reading materials ready for me, though, and if memory serves, that isn’t included in the Stars program. Yes? No?

I think unless you work with kids 1:1 and get to really see this for yourself, especially bright kiddos, it’s just hard to believe how much it helps to focus on that Orton-Gillingham mantra “Multisensory, multisensory, and teach to automaticity.” SOmetimes quicker really isn’t better because these guys need to learn it so much deeper… but then it really *does* stick.

Hi Sue—

Since I began teaching reading in public school two years ago, I haven’t had the luxury of 1:1 instruction. I do groups of 3-4 for PP-Gr1 level readers and groups of 6+ for Grade 3 up readers. My school students with LD have made very nice gains (average two grade levels in one school year). I move students along and separate groups as achievement warrants. It’s not perfect, but 1:1 just isn’t feasible with many students to see each day.

and then it closed later? My dd is not due for IQ testing until next Spring. I’m worried the gap will close in the wrong direction? She had a 30pt split in performance vs. verbal 2 years ago. I suppose if it does, this is a pretty good indicator of ADHD? I’m highly suspecting we have that going on - mainly due to many of your posts. I feel like she is hanging in there (except in writing) and until we start seeing more academic issues (like not being able to follow a lecture/lesson in class and be able to take notes etc.) I’m relunctant to seriously consider the meds. Although, I’m curious to see if we would see any changes?

(And hello again, long time no see ;) :))

Even at TNCS, we went to groups of 4-5 in middle school and it still works - just don’t know if *I* would have been smart enough to see the difference the whole automaticity emphasis makes.

I’m a teacher from Australia and I’d like to know what LIPS is. I gather it’s an articulation/auditory processing program. Could someone enlighten me.

Frances Smith
Ashbury, Sydney, Australia.

I must have missed something: automaticity? Explain your context.

I would like to say, though, that I cannot imagine you missing much. Your knowledge has always impressed me!

Nice to talk with you again, too!

Hi Frances,

Try www.lindamoodbell.com. LindamoodBell ,abb. LB, is the parent company of LIPS. They have a good website that explains who they help. It is a speech pathology program originally which Ms Lindamood and Ms Bell turned into a teaching reading program because they found it helped not only speech but reading. It is good esp for kids who have low phonemic awareness, the ability to connect sounds with letters. Bottom line - kids who can’t connect with the sounds learn to feel the sounds in their mouths, classify them and then can learn phnetically how to sound out words and decode. It is multisensory.