HELP!! what next? did O-G, how is Linda Mood Bell

My kid did LB for writing (no other academic problems per se) and made the first progress in 3 years. I would give it a try—but it took 80 hours this summer and she is not yet at grade level. takes a long long time but there is improvement

Since motivation isn’t a factor (it often is for older kids), then LMB may be just the program. It’s intensive and it owes a lot of success to that. Any good program, properly referred, that’s done intensively with a motivated individual should see great results. Of course, that’s if the program is suitable for the person’s needs. I HAVE seen the LMB people not take students because they feel their program wasn’t right for them so I’d trust their assessment. They’ll want to conduct their own testing. I’m assuming your plan is for your child to go to one of the regional centers for their daily intensive work for several weeks. That will produce the best results in the shortest amount of time.

So, by all means, give them a try. Hopefully they’ll also feel their program is a good match for your son.

K, reading your post raised some questions in my mind. What EXACTLY is the nature of the difficulty your son is still experiencing? Is he having continued difficulty attacking words, only multi-syllabic words? Is he usually successfully attacking words, but reading so slowly he cannot successfully read above a third grade level with independence?
I think the answer to your question lies in knowing more about the nature of his disabilities and his needs.

Certainly O-G methods are about as good as it gets. Lindamood Bell offers several different programs for several different issues. The LiPs program is their phoneme sequencing program. I am not trained and do not use it. I find that in the reource room where I work I can use O-G methodology (I don’t use one specific program, just instructional techniques covering a specific scope and sequence of skills) effectively with most students, virtually all students. I use my home made letter tiles to work at sequencing the sounds and building words.

Lindamood Bell also sells a reading comprhension program called Visualizing and Verbalizing (this helps to build comprehension skills for that group of students who is not able to visualize as they read) and Seeing Stars (for what they call symbol imagery). If I had to guess what your son might most benefit from at this state, I might predict it would be the Seeing Stars Program.

I do not have enough experience with Seeing Stars to know if it works.

I do think that the benefit of most of these highly structured and systematic programs is in the retraining of the brain that goes on while the student moves through the program with regular, guided practice.

I have taught many students after hours of OG and LMB. Neither one of the programs really hit phonemic awareness in the advanced like Phono-Graphix does. I have had great success in a short amount of time. Please email me directly with your phone number and time to call and I will help you. I specialize in teaching older kids using PG.

That’s a bit hard to believe since Phono-graphix is basically a less intense, less comprehensive version of Lindamood-Bell’s LIPS. Most people would say that Phono-graphix is what you try first for people whose problems aren’t severe. LIPS is considered the premier phonemic awareness program. So, if what you’re saying really is true, then the problem is not with the LIPS program itself but with the practitioner. That will always be a problem with every program. There are lousy practitioners of every program, including Phono-graphix.

I’ve used both Phono-graphix and LIPS so I know whereof I speak. I’ve also used LIPS very successfully with teens.

Shay, I’ve got to admit: your post sounds an awful lot like advertising.

Well, I think Shay speaks highly of PG because she successfully remediates kids with it. She generously offers her time and expertise to help a multitude of people (teachers, tutors, and parents) at no charge. Shay happens to be a perceptive and excellent teacher who uses a good tool to it’s maximum potential. She also does not work for PG and is not compensated by them. So the insinuation that she is advertising couldn’t be more false.

One more thing, PG is not a “less comprehensive version” of LiPS. And the intensity is determined by whoever is using it.

Janis

don’t get the PG folks riled up again. ;-|

Text erased because it would have.

LMB and OG are very close cousins. So LMB would be a lot of review which might be exactly what needs to happen to bring the skills he has partially acquired in OG to automaticity.
For kids with more severe issues then the ability of the individual teacher to adapt to the kid (and work wiht kids like him) could be more important than precisely what program was used.

I should have known better than to post what I did. I believe the question was what else can she do since LIPS and OG didn’t work, and I gave her another option. I didn’t slam either of the other programs just stated that I have remediated kids with PG when LIPS and OG didn’t work. Mostly, I email the person directly so as not to get into this kind of discussion. I refuse to be dragged into this line of discussion, between the three methods. I have never had to refer one of my clients to use LIPS or OG because they were reading quickly with PG. I find the problem with the other two programs is the time. My kids and parents don’t have the money for 200-300 hours for LIPS and years of study with OG or one of it’s clones.

Concerning advertising PG, the statement that you made concerning LIPS,
“LIPS is considered the premier phonemic awareness program’, could be considered advertising, far more than what I said about PG. I personally don’t care what program people use, but that was not the question that was asked. She wanted to know another option and I gave it to her. I have no affiliation with Read America other than being a trained reading therapist and trainer. I receive nothing from them, my business is my own.

Shay, I know you really like P-G. Have you determined what property of this program sets it apart from the programs you have felt are less successful? It would seem to me that there is something about this program that makes it work, and that this could be applied by anyone, in almost any situation.

I have the program, but don’t believe it offers enough practice to meet the needs of some of the students I teach. Otherwise, I find the program to be sound, just that I think many of my students need more practice time with the skills.

I am so glad that you asked. Yes, there are three main exercises in PG that I feel set it apart and you will never know if you don’t use it. The first area is how you teach the advanced code. Instead of rules and exceptions, there are choices for the sound. Let me explain, Take the sound /o-e/. The dipthongs and digraphs (D and D) for the sound /o-e/ are ‘ow’, ‘oe’, ‘oa’, ‘ough’, ‘ou’ and ‘o’. You tell the student that when he sees these combinations of letters in a word, the sound may be /o-e/. Next, you go to sound/ow/; you do it the same way. ‘ow’, ‘ou’, and ‘ough’. You ask him what are the similarities between sound /o-e/ and sound /ow/? He or they will say that they are examples of both sound /o-e/ and /oa/. You then say, how will you know what sound to say, and they will say try both and which sound sounds right in the word. This is how you do every sound in the advanced code, for older kids, the faster the better. You say you don’t use it because you feel that your kids need more practice time, well give them more practice time. How you use the program, depends on the kids sitting in front of you. There have been times in which I have kept kids on the basic code, chap. 3 of Reading Reflex, (don’t know what book you have) , until they can segment and blend and then word read most of the words in that level by just looking at the word. Now, don’t misunderstand me, they are not sight reading, before they were able to read the word, they were sounding each sound out and then saying the word. I have had to do this with the kids who were labeled CAPD. Before I started with them, they couldn’t distinguish any sounds in words. Decoding frog may have been unrecognisable, /sl/g/ph. Where the practice comes from is when the child reads the stupid stories in the book and then goes right into regular literature with the reading level being a little higher. I have found that there is something that I do when teaching PG that other people don’t do, and that is having the student study the charts of dipthongs and digraphs that are in the book. I use a slightly different one but it is generally the same. After we have finished a sound, I have the kids look at the chart and see what all of the D and D have in common for the sound that we have done. This helps increase visual memory.

The second area that is different is how PG handles the MS (multi-syllable) words. There is no reason why a child has to know open and closed syllables in order to read. This and rules slow the child down when reading because they have to try to remember the rules for the word or whether it is closed or open. I give the kid three rules, ( I know I said no rules, but yea there are three small ones):
1. A ‘chunk’ is only a mouthful of sounds
2. In a chunk, you will have either a vowel sound, er or ow, or special ending.
3. Never split a sound.
The third rule is always a problem for some people, but it works.
So in the word allow, you can split the word either between the a llow or between all ow. It doesn’t matter as long as the student can read it. This takes about 15 minutes and then you do the list of words in the book and then have the students find long words in the dictionary and see if the class can decode them. This is a great exercise because when they have stumped you, and they will with scientific words, you can teach them how to use the dicationary! It also shows them that they will never be able to decode all of the words, but they can come close.

The next area that is so different is how you do error correction. I think that this actually is the best part of the program. When the kids start reading, ( whether young or old), you help them decode the words that they don’t know during a cold read. I know people are aghast about this but it works. Of course by the time you do it with older kids, you have gained their trust and they don’t feel self-conscience about it. I tell them that it is just for decoding words, not comprehension. Kids have to be able to decode fluently before they really can comprehend text. How you do it, when a child is reading and doesn’t know a sound in the word or reads the wrong sound or whatever, stop him at the last correct sound and question him about the sound he doesn’t know. For example, in the word construction. say he says cone for con, stop and say ‘look at the word again, where is the first chunk, con is a prefix and when you see it it is always pronounced ‘con’. This is how I begin teaching suffixes and prefixes in reading. Telling you how to do things in PG is hard to write down. I can tell you that I don’t let my older students read until I am done with the program, about 3 weeks, because when you start doing error correction while they are reading, you will think that you never taught them at all! The problem is that they will revert back to all of their old reading habits and you have to help them correct them as they read. It is amazing when you hear them read and they say a word that they didn’t know before and they ask you why could they do that? Then you know that the nerve cells are actually working.

I hope I have clarified PG for you. I don’t know why you think that your kids can’t do the program. I do think that people think that PG is only for those kids who have moderate problems in reading but not for the ‘dyslexics’ of the world. In the schools where it is used as the decoding/spelling strategy program in general ed, they have very rare referrals for sped. It is being looked at as one of the programs that teach the low 20%. Don’t tell my daughter or those who I have remediated that they shouldn’t have learned how to read with it, they will tell you that they don’t understand why they weren’t taught this way from the beginning! Email me directly with your telephone number and a good time to call and I will tell you more. Use it, you will never do anything else. Can’t know what it will do unless you try. Shay

Jean,

Just because something is simple and straight forward does not mean that it is inferior.

I think that is the strength many miss in phonographix. I am a believer in the program because using it, I a simple parent, without the benefit of teaching expertise, was able to teach my child to read when the “experts” couldn’t.

I don’t quite follow the need for hostility toward someone who has helped so many.

Linda

It is inappropriate to insult people and doubly so under the guise of a name where others are not able to identify you.

I think you should, in the future, refrain from attacks, or at the very least identify yourself so those of us who have been around can assess the character of the individual who so freely insults others.

Someone came on here asking for help. A very knowledgable educator helped that person. If you have nothing to contribute, perhaps you should leave.

We were most successful with Master the Code (MTC) and Reading Reflex. We got stuck on Reading Reflex because I wasn’t trained past reading the book and my dd had alot of blending difficulties that we just couldn’t get past. MTC was very similar approach, but had alot more exercises that as a parent, I was able to implement. I chose MTC because I could not find a PG person in my area.

We did LMB a couple different times, w/ 2 different professionals. Our non-success was probably mainly due to the providers. We never got passed the lip-poppers/tongue tappers. This was after several months and was seeing no progress(my dd is not a touchy/feely learner). My only other comment on LMB was that I had no clue what the ‘therapist’ was teaching, so I couldn’t practice it at home - where most of the reading takes place. If you are tutoring with PG, you can have the parents read the book and reinforce what the child is learning, when you read at home. MTC requires parent involvement (homework), so you also get that reinforcement.

I still don’t understand LMB. MTC and RR were very intuitive, easy to learn.

We too had problems with LMB. I think the feeling the sounds in the mouth is a great approach for some kids. For my son, the names were just one more thing to remember and he already had memory problems. After we stopped the tutoring, I had two other therapists tell me that LMB was not the most appropriate program for my son. Why—one said because of his small motor issues in the mouth (dyspraxia), the other said because it teaches too much part to whole which is a clear deficit of his.

My son initially learned to read with Reading Reflex. We stalled out too, like Dea, but with Shay’s help, we have passed some of those obstacles.

Beth

I did lindenmood bell ( pretty intensive) from 6th though 8th grade it helped i guess but the stuff they make you do is really geared for younger children mabye up to forth grade. I remember having to point to colored fabric and look at my lips in the mirror. Oh and i’m 16 now.

I teach middle and high school students and they say the same thing. I try to move them away from these tasks as soon as the brain connection is made on moving sounds around. Then, we work on seeing more difficult patterns. How is your reading now?