Seeing Stars

Hi Beth,

Yes, doing it on the table is fine. I’m finding that most of my students prefer it on the table rather than air-writing. Initially I insisted that they do it in the air but as I became more confident in myself, I started to allow table-writing for those kids who buck the air-writing.

I think that as long as you quiz him a lot-“What’s the second letter you wrote?” “Spell the word backwards”etc., he’ll be forced to maintain the image in his head. He’s got to remember it long enough to manipulate it inside his head.

I’ve had kids who can only hold 3 letters in their minds (right now I have a 3rd grader who can’t even hold two) and, with consistent daily practice, they improved.

I like the SS workbooks but I still think that nothing beats the systematic ghost writing and quizzing. That, combined with a good phonics program, seems to help the most.

Hi Beth,

The techniques you mention are present in many instructional programs. The table-top tracing technique was originally attributed to Grace Fernald and is not a Nanci Bell exclusive.

What makes a difference is forming the letters correctly. Sometimes it is hard for the instructor to see how the letter is being traced when student is forming small letters. I have used a slick placemat (from teacher’s store)—a wipe-off kind of thing—with writing guide-lines drawn on. Something laminated would work well, too.

Just be sure the letters are being formed correctly. Go slowly and deliberately.

Air-writing is a kinesthetic movement, whereas table-top writing is both tactile and kinesthetic. I like it best, too.

As far as improving visual memory—I don’t know about that. I have had some recent discourse about what is happening in the brain when children see & mentally associate letters with sounds. Many believe that this becomes a silent auditory process. (But that the auditory/speech section of the brain is working.) If one is thinking about saying the letter sound, I buy this. If thinking about letter names, I do not automatically think this. I assume you’re doing sound.

People who do well at Digit Span (WISC subtest) report doing some visualization and subvocal planning. I can see this as improving memory, for sure, whether the stimuli is auditory or visual.

>>”What’s the second letter you wrote?” “Spell the word backwards”etc., he’ll be forced to maintain the image in his head. >>

This is the key in SS, isn’t it, forcing him to maintain the image in his head? Is this like the blocks portion in the LiPS? That is, forcing the child to maintain the sounds in his head without the letters? In the past, before I took the training, I used to skip the blocks section because the students find it hard to remember the sounds without the mouth pictures and the letters. I figured that if the goal is to read (and the students were really getting better at reading even without the blocks section) then I could skip this portion? But when I took the training last summer, we were told that the blocks section is the most important part of LiPS because that stimulates the auditory part of the brain. Any thoughts on this? Right now I’m tempted to skip this section again because my student seems to be improving anyway and I want to see results right away. I only get to pull out the child for 30 minutes. The rest of the time is inclusion.

I don’t know LiPs, but I do know impossible schedules. The rule is to do what you can and prioritize. Then let everybody under the sun know that you need more time to do a good job, especially the parents. If the kid is improving on reading and you are so limited, well, I would work on the reading too. if the reading stalls you can go back to more phonemic work.

I use markers on a large whiteboard. Same plan, visual and tactile feedback.

Yes, forming the letters properly is absolutely crucial.

Forming the letters reasonably large is important to get a free-flowing motion; this is important for speed, for proper formation later, for easy and quick writing later, and to get good kinesthetic feedback. If the letters are formed with little twists of the wrist, writing is slow and painful and there is no real shape feedback to the brain. I would say that three inches high should be plenty.

Barbara, Yes, you’re exactly right - the real key lies in what questions you ask that will help the child cement the image. And yes, you’re right about the blocks too - they ARE the most important tool in the early part of LIPS work. They ARE hard for many kids because you’re calling on them to hear the sounds. For people with auditory discrimination problems, that’s of course the hardest thing to do because you’re isolating the area of difficulty.

Don’t ever skip them. But don’t make them bitter medicine either. That was my mistake initially- it’s the common mistake. In fact, I’d say that blocks are what keep lots of teachers from embracing LIPS - blocks scares them off. They might try it once, find it difficult, and give up. But invariably it’s because they’re approaching it wrong, expecting too much too soon, spending too much time on it. Another reason why LIPS fails for some people is because the teacher is skipping over blocks out of fear. I’ve thought about this a lot and I think that the LMB people would do well to spend a considerable amount of their teacher training course time reassuring them and showing them different strategies for blocks work.

When I first started, I had the idea that I had to get through a chain of 10 regardless of how hard it might be for the child. Now I’m happy with 5. Sometimes a chain of 3. The key is to not get bogged down. Some kids I work with struggle so hard with their auditory memory that I have to do the harder work with tiles (they have the visual component) but easier chains with blocks. This would be the reverse of what LMB ordinarily recommends. But it builds confidence in the child and eventually they manage blocks fairly well.

You should never spend more than 5 minutes a session on blocks. Less is more. With some kids, I spend a scant 2 minutes. But that’s at least 3x a week so there’s some consistency.

I also had one child who couldn’t do blocks alone - we worked blocks and tiles together. With most children, once they’re comfortable with certain pictures and sounds, I combine SS with blocks by doing chains with blocks and writing the ghost letter on top of each block. You can then quiz the child “what’s the last letter?” etc.

I’ve found that blocks don’t work with a dyspraxic person. The child is struggling too hard just to get the message to his mouth that there’s no attention left for the purely auditory component. I’d address the dyspraxia before attempting blocks.

I think 3 inches is a bit small. The Montessori sandpaper letters, which are supposed to be the exact size to coordinate fine and gross motor movement, are around 6 inches tall.

Also, re: the blocks for the Lips Program. I’m using magnets. I got some magnetic tape at Walmart and some fairly large flat coloured buttons and stuck the tape on the bottom. It’s nice. It makes a kind of firm clicking sound when you place them down and that really makes it seem definite somehow. And if you need to write the actual visual clue (letter) you can do it with post-it notes so they can be moved around.

That’s a good idea, Eleanor. I like the idea of a satisfying click when they put the buttons down. I just use a set of colored blocks I got at a toy store. The LMB materials are all so expensive that I’ve ended up making my own out of whatever’s around. I use scrabble tiles instead of LMB tiles. For tiles with more than one letter, I use the back of a scrabble tile and write in permanent marker.

The Montessori sandpaper letters are so large because they’re designed for use with children primarily about age 3 or 4. By five years old, most Montessori kids are using the moveable alphabet which are still pretty large cutout alphabet pieces, almost the size of the sandpaper letters, although I’ve seen some classes where they’re the same size. They’re starting to move away from such large letters, though, in their other language work. Most of their letters in these other works are about an inch tall. Kids who enter Montessori at the age of 5 still get the sandpaper letter lessons but much of what they’re handling is smaller. At least, this is the way it’s been in the 3 Montessori schools I’ve been associated with. There’s some variation among schools, I know.

By first grade, they’re using a moveable alphabet where the cutout letters are each, at the largest, an inch tall. So three inches for three or four letter words would be about right. Kids usually only use the moveable alphabet in the early months of first grade. We’re moving them towards the size of handwriting they’d normally be doing.

In Torgesen’s well published study, he used two groups: One had clinical LiPS and the other had an embedded phonics (that he does a nice job of explaining but I cannot without digging out the study). Interestingly, there was no big difference in the word attack skills between these two groups. Now, the LiPS group did show improvement in spelling skills if my memory serves me. Neither group showed fluency improvement (which we would expect) and comprehension showed no treatment effect (as expected).

Since LiPS includes both manipulating phonemes with tiles and with a different abstract symbols (blocks), one doesn’t know if the reduction of the other may produce the same effect. Certainly, Torgesen’s work raises an eyebrow in that direction. Other studies that I found through the Phoneme Awareness piece of the National Reading Panel’s work demonstrate that the tracking component may not have the benefit I once thought it to have.

Being LiPS trained and having 90 hours practica in a clinic, I was reluctant to totally eliminate tracking. (Fortunately, I was already Orton trained so I wasn’t this marching LiPS program robot, either.) As Joan mentions, I too, reduce it to a chain of 5 (or whatever I can get done in 5 minutes) while I’m working on the initial CVC, CCVC, CCVCC, CCCVCC patterns in reading.

Instead of those horrid little fumbling tiles, I use nice big, white cardstock letters that have so many more combinations to use later on, too. Vowel teams, consonant-le ending, all the blends one could imagine. (I get the cards from Educational Tutorial Consortium in Nebraska. They do have a website.) Cheaper, too, and easily lends to a nice game we call “The blending game.”

I generally begin with Elkonian instead of tracking. If the child can manipulate sounds with Elkonian, I do less tracking: This is how I gauge student needs. Someday, I may use only Elkonian and forget the tracking. For now, I’m reluctant to let it go entirely lest the LiPS Gods (P & P) strike me down in my sleep.

I also agree with the fluid tracing motion mentioned above (forgot whom). My wording “deliberate” might lead people to think “twisted wrist” as Victoria says. That’s not what I mean. I always wish students to have a flowing motion, but not hurried or rushed.

No one is going to be hurt by a little tracking—but like Joan also mentioned, I’ve seen people make tracking the object of the lesson. They hold people back from learning because the student is slow to pick up on tracking. (This is the problem with anyone who just follows a program without thinking. They get stuck on little program details and think all i’s must be dotted. I’ve seen teachers perseverate on Wilson’s tapping the same way.)

I like Eleanor’s button idea. Kids would like that, too, I think. In school, I just use small, laminated pieces of colored paper and model on the board with larger, magnetic ones. As I said, though, I do much more work with letters and use magnetic sets at school. I use the white cards for 1:1 tutoring and for visual drill at school.

But Joan, don’t you think that at that point (moveable alphabet) the student has passed the period of integration, (learning) and has moved on to practice.

For a remedial student, such as one doing Seeing Stars, they would be in the same sensitive period for integrating the information as a 3 or 4 year old doing the sp letters for the first time in a Montessori classroom. The size of the letters is based on a child (student) who is learning the information for the first time - and still hasn’t got it to automaticity. It hasn’t anything to do with chronological age. I think if you are working with a student at a level where he is not yet automatic the slightly larger size would be a requirement. The moveable alphabet is for a child who already has passed that point.

Glad you liked the magnet idea. It’s actually not mine. Another teacher I worked with a few years ago came up with it. That and the post-its. I’ve been pretty successful with them too.

Joan,

My son has never been diagnosed with dyspraxia but def. has small motor issues. He has had therapy but there still are some issues. Last summer we hired a LMB tutor to come three times a week and it was a disaster. He basically gained no information from feeling the sounds in his mouth and the labels were another layer of memory for him.

Now, you say that blocks don’t work with a dyspraxic child. We aren’t doing blocks now but I have been having him do chaining. This wears him out and I am wondering if this is the best approach for a kid like him. This is what I have been doing. I have been saying a nonsense syllable like “op”, having him repeat it, then write it on the table, then say it. Then I ask him the first and last letter. Then I have him change the letter O, for example, to an I, and tell me the word. I have him change it maybe three or four times, then he usually tells me he can’t do it. Then I start with a new nonsense syllable. He has more trouble changing “osh” to “op” then “op” to “osh”.

I have been doing this far longer than five minutes–maybe this is the problem?

Any thoughts?

Beth

The Seeing Stars manual makes a big deal about writing in the air so that is why I asked. I had not thought about the kinesetic input from writing on the table. My son just seems to not object to it as much.

One thing I thought of as I read these posts is to put masking tape on the table and make lines that indicate how big the letters are supposed to be.

I too understand that those with wonderful visual memories visualize rather than translate visual into auditory information. I am looking for him to be functional—he doesn’t have a strong auditory memory either. It does seem that visual memory type tasks are more difficult for him—perhaps because he has to translate it into auditory first. I think I visualize letters but not numbers–I keep repeating phone numbers!!! It would seem though that the ability to hold letters in your mind would make the tasks of school like copying easier.

Beth

Let me tell a bit more about my son and see what you think about size. Just don’t want to fight more battles than I need to with him but don’t want to waste our time either.

He is 9, in fourth grade, and reads independently at a 3.5 level. He has had lots of remediation. He has both auditory and visual processing problems. He reads better with larger size text than is typical in fourth grade books (which is his instructional level). His sight vocabulary is fourth grade level but decoding of advanced code still is not perfect.

I can see that he doesn’t retain the visual pattern of words well which is why I am doing Seeing Stars with him.

Beth

Since I started doing this with my son I know I have become more visual and my memory has improved.

I think I was pretty visual to begin with.

I have had quite a few conversations on this topic with my sister. She attributes her son’s excellence in school to his ability to visualize anything. She says he has a photographic memory.

I have heard that phrase before but it never occurred to me that you could teach a child to do this.

Although I’m not familiar with Seeing Stars I have tried to get my son to “air write” to help him visualize. But he basically refuses — thinks it’s silly! — or puts no effort into it (he’s a very sloppy air writer!).

The table writing idea sounds great, but I’m wondering if there’s any merit to the idea of having a child “write” in a shallow plate of cornstarch in water — which might add a more tactile dimension to this exercise?

I have used sand—did spelling words in sandbox and shaving cream. Shaving cream went over really well. Now in both of these mediums you see the word with your eyes as well so not sure doing same process as in Seeing Stars.

Beth

I agree, the point seems to be to create the image. The writing in the air or on the table is writing what you are hopefully seeing in the image you create in your mind.

Beth,
for doing it at home- did you buy the entire “kit”, or individual pieces?

Ewa

I bought the manual and the work books. I have been writing the syllables from the workbooks on a white board. Easier than making my own cards and much cheaper than buying theirs.

You could just buy the manual. There are some word lists in the back of the manual.

Beth

Some do soap, some shaving cream, some pudding or whatever. I don’t do those things because I don’t wish for the set-up time to exceed the intervention time. I just make it as simple as possible and move on into the next part of the lesson.

I get a medium-to-large whiteboard and a bunch of wipe-off markers. I also got some laminated sheets with about 4 inch primary writing lines on them, I think from Scholar’s Choice, and mounted them on foamboard; they could also be taped right down to the table. Or, you can draw lines on the whiteboard with a regular non wipe-off marker and the lines will stay when you erase the writing. If you’re doing this very seriously it would be a really good idea to mount the whiteboard at a slope, like a drawing table.
This gives a nice kinesthetic feel as the markers flow without pressure, and it adds in the visual component; then it takes seconds to wipe off and start over.

Cornstarch in water doesn’t hold shape (if there’s enough water), but it’s a neat tactile experience.

Generally very good for any type of tactile defensiveness —and might be fun for variety’s sake.

You might ask *him* for ideas, with the premise that you are going to do *something* that uses the bigger motor skills with a tactile element. (My students were more willing to do air wriitng if it couldn’t be seen by anybody wandering by… then there’s writing it on someone’s back, in shaving cream on the bathroom tiles…)