LD Memory

Have this child visualize the letter M. Ask him to make a picture in his head of the letter. You can even describe this as a white letter on a black board that he should see in his head.
I found a few exercises that help children learn to visualize. One is draw 3-4 colored circles on a board. red, blue, yellow etc. Have the child look at them, then take them away. Ask the child what he saw. Encourage him to use the mental picture strategy of remembering.

Another exercise is to cut out a picture from a magazine. Have the child look at it for about 5-10 seconds. Then take the picture away and ask the child what she saw.

People with good imagery are more efficient learners. I am convinced you need to see letters in you mind in order to write them.

This a lindamood bell seeing stars concept but the exercises are from other sources as well.

Linda,
Which of these is from LMB? Have you used these exercises and found them useful?

Linda, Can you post more information about what you’ve learned about seeing stars? You know we are thinking of doing Lindamood Bell over the winter break, but I am also thinking about doing my own “school” over the break - maybe a combo. of PG, Seeing Stars and some vision therapy. The LMB web site is pretty vague, so if you have the specifics it would help!

PS I agree that you have to see the letters to write, and definitely to spell!

Thank you Linda,
I will try this with my student. I will also try to find more info on Lindamood Bell seeing stars. Thank you again.
DJ

I spent $100 on the seeing stars and visualizing and verbalizing material. While think they present an incredibly important concept, they don’t go into great detail on how to do this in the books. I think they want you to go to one of their workshops. Frankly, I think this is a pretty straight forward concept, one that is fairly easily explained.
The seeing stars workbooks have a series of common beginning and ending letter sound combinations. It is not meant to teach phonemic awareness; from what I understand that is done through their lips program. I still think (and there is quite a bit of research that backs this up)that phonemic awareness is the most important component to developing reading skills. My approach has been to use the reading reflex book and have my son visualize the sounds in each word to remember how they are spelled. This helps him deal with the great is not grate problem. He has to see that ‘ea’ is the second sound in great not just hear the sounds.

I do think the hearing the sounds is extremely important for reading but he already could do this. I would say that if your child was not reading to really just follow the reading reflex book. Even with my son’s vision issues and lack of symbol imagery he became quite a good reader with reading reflex. I would not abandon they way they teach reading and replace it with teaching visualization.

When my son spells a word wrong it is usually because he is spelling the word phoneticly but not using the correct sounds for that word. I teach him to look at the word in his head. We do this with the weekly spelling list. If he gets something wrong for example if he spells great as grate, I would ask him to look at the word in his head and tell me the third sound he sees, if he says ‘a’ I would show him the word so that he can see what the picture in his head should look like.

I think it is helping but I think it will take alot of practice. He needs to take many more pictures. This has been hard to implement because he started a new class with much more homework so we don’t have a lot of time for extra things.

Visualizing and verbalizing is different than seeing stars. It really is about visualizing concepts to improve comprehension. I think he can do this pretty easily. For instance when I read him a story I asked if he was able to make a picture in his head about what I read. He described the characters with great detail, hair color what they were wearing etc. It seems he already does this so I haven’t really gone into the visualizing verbalizing book with him.
A summary of areas of weakness that can be improved upon through VV is:
-weak reading comprehension
-weak oral language comprehension
-weak oral language expression
-weak written language expression
-weak sense of humor
-weakness in following directions
-difficulty with cause and effect

These are pretty much strengths for my son so I think he can make images of concepts but needs coaching to make images of symbols.

( I have been wondering of late if the weak symbol imagery is related to a vision issue, maybe he is just not seeing the symbols well enough)

Karen,

I have the Seeing STars manual. Basically, it goes through a process of teaching kids to “see” letters in their mind. It is pleasant reading and not very hard to do. You might just want to purchase the manual and see what you think. I bought some of the books too—they had nonsense words in them. There are also suggestions for words in the manual. Lindamood also has lots of fancy stuff you can buy but I’d just get the manual to start. You can use it along side PG or any other program.

Beth

So you don’t think that the V & V books provide enough detail for a parent to it themselves? I have been stewing about this—contacting some local people about therapy and debating about doing it myself.

I remember reading about another, similar program, that provided more scripting than V & V. But it actually sounds like your son needs more of the Seeing Stars program. I think that it is pretty well laid out and easy to follow. I know a couple kids who just really took off once they had symbol imagery down a la Seeing Stars. I would say that it can’t be a huge problem for your son since he did learn to read using PG. One of these kids was really unsuccessful with PG (and this was at their clinic). Seeing Stars turned him around.

My son also can see images in his mind but as we completed third grade, I saw comprehension issues surfacing. I can’t remember if your son is in third or fourth grade but if he is in third grade, I’d put V & V on a shelf (and hope you don’t need it!!

I find that having my son “see” letters in his mind helps him remember spelling patterns that are not completely phonetic.

Beth

I think many spelling patterns either aren’t phonetic, or have too many options . My son spells completely phonetically, and almost 80% wrong. I think if seeing stars helps with that it would boost his self esteem. He also scored very low on the phoneme/grapheme piece of the WJIII, so I think he needs help linking the sounds (which he does have down pretty well) to the letter symbol. We are working our way thru PG, and he really does know much of the code but his tutor thinks coming at him from multiiple angles really helps him and I agree. Never can tell what will stick with him.

Linda,
Thanks for explaining these books. I had been thinking of purchasing them as well, but have gone back and forth on it.

Just like you I’ve been wondering how much of weak symbol imagery is related to vision. Although it seems more likely to me that there may be a neurological “glitch” that makes it difficult for some individuals to form certain pictures. Or maybe an area that just wasn’t adequately developed at the appropriate developmental stage?

For example, my son appears to be extremely adept at forming certain types of visual pictures (a series of simple patterns such as musical notes or “+0++0”), but I think he may have much more difficult time with letters, numbers and possibly colors.
I’m doing Audiblox with him and I’m noticing that he relies much more on auditory memory (internally telling himself the color patterns of the blocks to create an auditory memory link), as oppossed to memorizing what the entire pattern looks like. When I try to get him to memorize what he sees he begins to lose his gains. And without this ability to create a mental picure, he will not be able to progress. Perhaps this has something to do with bilateral integration. So maybe I need to teach him visualizing techniques and somehow, in addition, reinforce directionality.

Come to think of it, I myself have a very difficult time visualizing numbers, amounts, and numerical concepts. But I can often memorize actual text by creating a mental image of the page I’ve read something from.

Well, I’m going to have my son try using some of those visualization techniques. Thanks for sharing! :-)