Seeing Stars by Lindamood Bell

I have heard that Seeing Stars is a very visual program, so it should be appropriate for your daughter.

However, have you considered trying “Reading Reflex” first? RR is a lot easier to do and works considerably faster. We had great success with it using the book at home. The book is available in most bookstores (was recently remaindered at http://www.hamiltonbook.com for $5) and contains everything you need.

Mary

IF it’s spelling & comprehension that are the problems, then I’d go with Seeing Stars. The students learn to use their visual skills to picture the words in their minds and connect the pictures to the words.

I would definitely keep an eye on those auditory skills, though — just how “okay” is her phonemic awareness? Sometimes a bright kid looks fine in first grade but is covering up a gap in processing skills with memory and verbal intelligence. Sometimes there really is no problem though — those aren’t the kiddos I see needing (but so seldom getting) remedial reading in highschool :) So, I would definitely play “sound games” wtih her — rhyming, changing letters around in words, that sort of thing. There are lots of neat ideas about reading and for working on the auditory end at http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/ .

I agree with Sue that it’s possibly a little too soon to be entirely certain about your daughter’s auditory processing skills. In the end, you might want to combine it with LIPS.

But from what you know about her as of now, yes, Seeing Stars would be great. And it’s extremely simple to use, in fact, just as easy as Reading Reflex. I think MaryMN is thinking about the LIPS program when she was comparing it to Reading Reflex. The LIPS handbook, when you first look at it, is a bit daunting. It’s huge but that’s because they give you many, many sample lessons. What they also give you are sample lessons on how to respond to errors that your students make. That’s critical in every teaching situation and I really like it that LMB recognizes this and gives you models to follow.

I happen to think that LIPS is very easy to teach, no harder than Reading Reflex which I used with a couple students before I began regularly using LMB. The beauty of the LIPS program, and its fundamental difference from Reading Reflex, as I think you know, is that it adds the sense of touch - “What part of your mouth is working when you make this sound?” - for kids who really can’t hear the sound. So it works a little from a speech and language pathology angle. Take that piece away from the LIPS program and you basically have Reading Reflex. The two programs are that similar. Also, LIPS works nonsense words more intensely than does Reading Reflex. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two.

I usually do “Seeing Stars” as an interwoven part of the LIPS program since most of my kids also need the auditory processing bit. But it’s a really fun program to do on its own and as a teacher, I enjoy working with the couple kids that are using only this program. You can turn it into lots of little games. I also found that I began to use elements of it as part of our regular spelling program for kids without any visual problems, simply because of its ease and its fun.

Mary,

I definitely plan to order Reading Reflex first. I have some students I want to try it with even if my child does not need it. I’ll write more about my child in reply to Sue or Joan’s posts below.

Janis

She has a non-verbal IQ of 111 and a phonemic awareness score of 85 std. score, so that is not really up to her potential. (She is adopted from China by the way, but we got her at age 6 months, so 2nd language is not involved). She can sounds out 3 letter words fairly well but gets into difficulty with longer words. She’ll sound put the beginning and guess the end of words. She also confuses “a” and “the” which I think is a typical dyslexia error. Lindamood Bell told me that seeing Stars should also strengthen phonemic awareness, so she might not need LiPS with an 85?

Right now she only qualifies for speech/language due to low subtests on the TOLD (sentence imitation, relational vocabulary, phonemic synthesis, artic-“r” and “th”) and two subtests on the CELF (one was related to auditory memory and I can’t remember the name of the other off hand). She has been evaluated at the U of FL Auditory Processing Disorder Clinic (in Nov.) and found to have some specific disorders in auditory processing. I would not think it would be considered severe.

Thanks for the link! I’ll be very interested to look at it!

Janis

Thank you, Joan! I am fairly certain that I will order the Seeing Stars manual. Then I’ll decide about the training. I did call LB to ask if they had any results from their research with the use of their programs with hearing impaired children and she said it is in progress now. If those results are positive, then I may take all the training since I could use it at school and home. (See my note above to Sue with a little more detail on my child’s scores.)

Janis

Janis,

I am a parent and bought the Seeing Stars manual to work with my child. It is very easy to follow and use.

Beth

That’s great to know, Beth. So you were able to use it without going for the training?

Janis

Well, I have *not* seen this kiddo so this is a blind guess — but frankly, it looks like a very classic dyslexic kid of the female variety, who compensates with her very strong intelligence. (Girls very often can pull in other language strengths better than guys, so they’re more likely to mask a problem — on the plus side, the strengths are real and don’t go away either).If I could swing it, and there was a good LiPS provider or a good Orton-Gillingham tutor, I’d do it — though, Has she had any special help in phonemic awareness? I might just strt with Seeing Stars to see if that doesn’t make her see connections she hasn’t made.

Sue,

Right now she is in a first grade class using Saxon phonics which is quite good, although she could use more practice. Saxon moves a little fast for an APD child. At this moment, I am having an APD specialist (audiologist/SLP/doctorate in education) in Washington analyze her test results and he will give me some specific therapy recommendations.

Her school, which is a charter school has a former educational psychologist for the principal, so he is very open to working with kids EARLY who are struggling with reading, etc. He knows placement as LD in second or third grade is too late. He told me he had ordered an O-G based program called the Barton Reading and Spelling Program to look at. I looked at the intro video and it looks good, but it is extremely expensive. There are others, like Spalding, for example, that would be less expensive (I did find a Spalding based curriculum at Riggs Institute for about $89). But he wants a program that basically provides the instruction word for word so that he can use volunteers or paraprofessionals to do the tutoring. I am trying to help him choose a program in the event my own child needs the program!!! Plus, I certainly want to see this school excel, which might challenge the public schools to improve instructional strategies for all LD children. My problem is that I can read about all the multi-sensory reading/language programs, but never having personally used them, I can’t possibly know which is most effective while being user friendly.

My question would be, should I influence the school toward just providing an O-G based program for reading, writing, spelling, or do they need to offer Lindamood Bell, also? Do both programs have the same result? Or do they do different things?

I really appreciate any advice you and others with experience can offer!!!

Janis

We didn’t go through the whole program because it became obvious to me that my son didn’t have sound symbol relationships down cold. There came a point where he was starting to visualize letters well but they weren’t necessarily the right letters!!!!

So we have backtracked. But I felt like it was working and that it wasn’t that hard to do. The book is written a bit like a novel with the author describing how she figured out that memory for letters was a piece of the dyslexic puzzle. There are very nice summary pages at the end too for each chapter.

The manual is written so that you don’t necessarily have to use it with LIPS either—just any good program teaching phonemic awareness.

Hi I noticed that you are from FL. I am also. 9 year old dyslexic Seminole County Schools. Private tutor. Evaluated by Kurtz Center, Marc Sherman, behavioral optometrist,Dr B. Mara, psychologist, and audiologist, speech nad language specialist,.and a host of others. But what really works to remediate. I believe he is gifted with a learning disability, undergoing further testing any suggestions. Has a private tutor for science and social studies. Attends language one class