LMB Testing

Based on the only student I’ve had who did intensive work at LMB, the testing they do is geared to show progress. If I remember correctly, LMB administered the LAC, form G of the GORT, and subtests of several other norm-referenced assessments. IMHO, the intake assessment is fair. It is not, however, comprehensive. It serves its purpose of identifying deficits that are addressed using LMB programs.

My biggest criticism is that they used the same form of assessments in posttesting that they had used in pretesting, which is not considered a valid use of measures such as the GORT within a 3 month time span.

If you can’t afford the LMB program, I think that your money would be better spent purchasing materials tailored to meet your children’s needs (are they in comprehension, decoding, processing speed….) and tutoring them yourself at home, perhaps with the support/guidance of a qualified tutor in your area.

Casey

At least a dozen kids in my school have attended the LMB intensive program for 4-6 weeks. In every case, when they’ve come back, they’ve jumped at least one, often more, grade levels. Their decoding and spelling skills are enormously improved. Comprehension, for those who’ve needed it, is also improved.

I agree that any highly qualified proven program, practiced at such an intensive level by a student correctly identified as needing it, will see equally wonderful results.

But even when such children return to their regular classrooms they still need support. An LMB intensive program will never eliminate the need for follow up support. But it WILL get the children caught up to their grade level at the very least in most cases so that they can effectively keep afloat, as opposed to swimming upstream, with a tutor.

I suspect the program works well with a selected group of students. if you are just looking for an evaluation, your money would be better spent elsewhere.

please- raid your cookie jar; my kiddo couldn’t decod a word to save his soul- his writing was incomprehensible groups of letters, sometimes vowels, sometimes not. The banana eating monkey director of sp ed was recommending that i) books on tape rather than actually learning to read , and ii)graduating high school reading at a fourth grade level were a-okay- because, well,you know little boo-boo does have a LD. clearly time to take the bull by the horns- we spent $7000 over 5 weeks 9+ testing at LMB- s now- kiddo still is bad speller, but I CAN READ IT (we can live with spell check). His reading: comp went through a 3 year excursion(1.5 year below to 1.5 year above- 1.5 year might not sound like alot- but when you see your kid whose iq puts him in the 90% reading at the12%-well, holy cow- also when you’re only 3rd grade 1.5 is alot)- as did his word attack skills. it seems rather miraculous- but true. so does that mean my kiddo is no longer dyslexic- no of course not- that’d be like expecting height or eye colour to change. But LMB DID give him the toools to learn how to read. worth every penny! feel free to email me

Thanks to all for the input….unfortunately, there is not $30,000 in my cookie jar, as I cleaned it out (plus some) to adopt my kids, and I’m a single mom. My kids are 10.4 (3rd grade) and 11.9 (5th grade). The 5th grader’s sp ed teacher says she is reading at 5th grade level — but I think that’s a stretch. And she’s definitely not writing at that level. The younger one — I’m fighting with child study right now to get her tested because she’s still in ESL (here 2 years, 3 months), because I know that she has problems that are not attributable to her level of English proficiency.

Though I would imagine that the program would help them, I need to find other ways to do that. The younger one may even need some other remediation before she could take full advantage of a program like LMB. So, it sounds like testing alone is better done elsewhere for the money, since the program itself is so far out of my reach, and I’d get a better bang for my buck spending it on remediation programs and tutors.

Thanks again for sharing your experiences and advice.
dab-nj

I found their testing to be a snapshot of my son’s reading/language skills that was completely consistent with the much much more comprehensive neuropsych . testing we had already completed.

I wouldn’t use it as a substitute, however, for a real work up, or for remediation.

PS. their post tests (after he spent 4 weeks with them) I felt were overly positive. We did see huge improvements, but I believe their testing protocol skewed the results.

: )

I’d suggest doing Reading Reflex on your own with your children if you can’t afford to pay for anything like intensive LMB. The RR is easy to learn. LMB’s LIPS program is excellent (more intensive than RR) but if you want to get started right away, RR is the way to go since you’d have to spend a little time learning the LIPS manual on your own.

Give them daily lessons this summer. Add LMB’s Visualizing & Verbalizing for the comprehension piece if you feel they need it. It’s fun and easy to use. You can also add LMB’s Seeing Stars, another fun method, for spelling. You can simply buy the manual for each of these LMB methods: they’re very, very easy to follow, have similar underlying concepts and you just pay for the manuals. The other materials they mention you can make yourself with construction paper or felt pieces (for the V/V) and with index cards (for Seeing Stars). I tutor kids using these methods and I’ve never bought the supplies, just the manuals.

When your kids are able to decode, then buy the manual for Great Leaps so you can work with them on reading fluency. It’s a very easy method that takes only about 5 minutes of work a day. It’s an important stage to work through after decoding is well under way.

Finally, if your child is having trouble with writing, I strongly recommend Step Up to Writing. Again, it’s something you can work on yourself with your children. You can begin teaching it to them this summer so that by fall school time, they can then start applying it to their homework (with your guidance).

Frankly, I strongly feel that those of us who can’t afford these very expensive intensives nor daily private tutoring also can’t rely on the school system to do the work for us. They won’t. They don’t have the money to do it right. You are absolutely correct that it’s the intensity of the remediation that counts. These are all good, proven methods. Thank goodness for a bunch of excellent programs that parents can use themselves.

Good luck.

Four hours a day, five days a week, for eight weeks — that’s incredible luxury! I tutor kids (and get very good results) two hours a week after school, three hours a week for the lucky ones.

Yes, any well-designed program done that intensively should show results. The key is in finding something that is well-designed.

As Joan V suggests, yes, you can do effective tutoring yourself. First you need the famous dirty four-letter words, time and hard work. You also need to have a student-teacher relationship with your kids — some parents and their children can change roles successfully, and some can’t. If you have the dedication and the ability to change caps, go for it. One or two hours a day with you *consistently* all year (only weekends and holidays off) can be even more than LMB. It’s cheaper in money — IF you are ready to pay the cost in sweat equity.

I have typed up several long posts describing what and how I do tutoring, a tried and true effective method, using whatever materials you find approptriate, mostly reasonable in cost. If you want these outlines just double-click on my name and email a request.

INtensity and frequency *are* critical factors for success in an intervention. Scratch the surface of descriptions and you do find that :-)

… though it basically echoes what’s been said — head over to http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba for a crash course in reading, and take a look at things like The Writing Road to Reading, REading Reflex, Let’s REad, or get VIctoria’s e-mail.
Perhaps the most important element aside from doing it every day and really focusing on it (there’s an infinite difference between 1:1 work on sounding out and spelling words by their sounds, and doing phonics worksheets) is, for kids with dyslexia, overlearning. It was totally counterintuitive to me — hey, it’s a bright kid, everything else sticks as soon as it lands in teh grey mattetr area! — but this is one area where it’s more like learning to play the violin — when you take the time to *really* get the basics down and automatic, even though they are “easy,” that’s when you can really take off and *go* places and use your intelligence later.

I think Joan’s recommendation is an excellent one. You can get all the kids working on it and helping out too. Create a “Reading Workout Area” with something like a card table, supplies and your “teaching materials” which could be those Joan recommended above. (You can pick up “Reading Reflex” from Amazon or almost any book store. And Gander Press sells LMB materials.

When I did a month-long Phonographic (Reading Reflex) intensive with my son we did two hours in the morning and 1-2 hours at night. And on the nights my daughter had dance classes, we’d bring a box of materials to the library, find a corner and spend between 2-3 hours (depending on how many classes she had that evening) working on it. I was fortunate the dance studio is close to a public libary. But even a nice park or some other place might have worked.

We also set up an elaborate reward system which helped keep him motivated.