LMB Test Results -trying to match to clinical statistics

I have similar test results on my child, except her comprehension was also a bit low, so she needs V/V, too.

I think Seeing Stars will help them get those letter sequences in their heads better. I think you have to get them accurately decoding before you get overall fluency increased. Seeing Stars, as I understand it, will help them with automatic word recognition. Automaticity needs to come before fluency. Most people wouldn’t continue to pay LMB for several more months following Seeing Stars to see the real gains in fluency. I think Seeing Stars is a good beginning, and then the child needs to read every night and use a program like Great Leaps to work on fluency. I noticed that Sopris West has a new fluency program out, too.

However, I will mention that I am not doing Seeing Stars at a LMB clinic.

Janis

Hi Janis,
I think you’re right. As Victoria has pointed out many times, fluency takes A LOT of time to develop and like most people I’d prefer to send my son there within the minimal recommended time frame. It’s just waaaay too expensive!

Although the testing may not reflect this, my main concern is getting my son to somehow easily recognize vowels and vowel teams. Even tonight there was a word. It was something like “tame.” He kept saying “tam” while I said, “Try again.” He said “tam” three times only chaning “ah” slightly. I reminded him, “When you see ‘e’ at the end…” And even then where he realized it was long “a” it was like he couldn’t remember how to say “a” for a moment!

I was a little surprised that V/ V wasn’t recommended. There have been times in the past when my son couldn’t explain something; like how he got a large cut on his forehead that day because he couldn’t remember what happened. I’ve worked with him a lot on comprehension and visualizing stories and events, so maybe this has helped (?).

They did say there was an odd anomoly with the test of Problem Solving being so low while the test of Verbal Absurdities was high (both are supposedly similar and used for checking concept imagery for V/V). So there is a chance he could still benefit from V/V. But they didn’t feel it was recommended. It may have been he was tired from testing or had just given up.

My son’s testing took 6 hours. Usually it takes 4, but my son is a slow processor and needs time to think before he answers questions.

Low spelling score, very low accuracy score, low rate, general lack of progress beyond Grade 3 level, and your own description — all of these are a tipoff to needing decoding work. I don’t know Seeing Stars, although many people here speak well of it. Many people here speak well of Reading Reflex too, and if you haven’t done it yet, that would be a less expensive way to get a start.
For myself with kids like this I work step by step by step dragging them through a good phonics series called Check and Double Check; as the name implies, every concept is taught and re-taught and reviewed and then self-tested twice. Results don’t come overnight but they do come, and when they do, they are solid.
The long a with silent e is a big conceptual step. Some kids take a few months of work to get it firmly in place.

Right now I am dealing with a student in Grade 8 with a verbal memory problem, working with him on French as a second language and on some homework. The geography homework made sense to him at once as soon as we used maps and pictures and personal memory instead of his teacher’s useless recitation of verbal formulas. Unfortunately the language *is* verbal formulas and they slide off his brain like water off a duck’s back. We’ve been working for four months and I’ve run him through three different textbooks to give him the extra practice he needs; we’ve finally got the er verbs fairly consistent, and he is remembering masculine and feminine at least half the time. His mother says for the first time in seven years he is actually understanding and remembering what he is reading in French class. Patience is a virtue, and no homicides. The only key I know is to do the same thing in seventy-six different places and to keep coming back to it and relating it to everything else. It does work, in time.

Although there are many supporters of LMB on this board, to improve rate and accuracy(that’s what makes up fluency), it takes many many months and years of daily work, not intensive work in a short time. We have spent YEARS working with my son(now in 7th gr), and it paid off. You need to read aloud with your child 20 minutes each and every day…use Great Leaps as well. Your thousands of dollars are better spent with tutoring over time, not in a big burst; be very wary of pre and post testing at LMB that uses the same test or form of the same test, that’s not measuring progress. Good Luck.

Laura,

This is really strange, but my child had a higher score (above her age level) in verbal absurdities and a very low score on the Test Of Problem Solving (standard score 70, 3rd %ile). The only significant difference I can see is that your son scored at the 75th%ile on the GORT-4 comprehension and my child scored at the 37th%ile. So I guess that’s why they thought she needed V/V and your son didn’t.

But I think both their scores look good for Seeing Stars. We must get them where they can decode accurately and rapidly process words before we can begin to increase fluency (which does take years). I really do believe this is an important step between basic phonemic awareness/decoding and fluency training.

I do use and like Phono-Graphix, but there are kids who just have trouble remembering those vowel digraphs. As a teacher, that is why I want to learn the Seeing Stars techniques. As a mother, I think my child needs it, too! You probably could save a considerable amount of money if you take the training yourself or pay for a good reading tutor to go. I do feel that the clinic cost is very high.

Janis

I’m one of those fans of LMB, but I haven’t taken any training yet and I don’t have a kid in the clinic. Seems to me they charge a bundle but I don’t know what it would be to do the intensity they have with some other system. They usually do daily and several hours at that. And they started in CA, that always seems to add $$ to things.

As for the program, I think the merits are that the kid will start internalizing the look of words. My feeling is that this is what “normal” readers do. They look at a word and know what it is. I don’t think PG will do that, of course it would help if the kid needs more decoding practice and experience. My understanding is that SS is for kids who are adequate decoders, but who can’t remember how a word looks and everytime they see it they have to re-decode it. This will definitely slow you down. It isn’t the end to the whole thing of fluency. I think it is prolly the start of it.

I also think that you might be cheaper off if you took the training or even bought the manual. It isn’t impossible. It does require “air writing”, and you might look at the LD parents section as there was a recent discussion on that.

—des

Thank you for all the great well-thought-out responses. I really appreciate everyone’s input. Originally we were planning to start at the clinic on Monday (quick!), but we weren’t able to set it up because I couldn’t get a hold of the princiapl at my son’s school. In the meantime I’ve been talking everything over with my husband and other family members, reading the responses here, reviewing my Seeing Stars manual and thinking….well…maybe I could do it myself.

If I did do it I was thinking I’d probably want to order the full set of materials and plan to organize and set aside two full hours per day for it. I’m even thinking I may sign up for the training. If worse came to worse and I didin’t see any progress, I can always take out a loan and sign my son up at a later date. That’s always an option. And even if we did do that, at least he could go through the clinic and I could continue to work with him after he finished there.

We did do PG over a year ago and my son made great progress. But I think the problem is memory. He slowly forgot a lot of what I taught him and general reading just wasn’t enough. I do think he needs to get sound/symbol memory more established and automatic. So I think the program may be helpful. But I agree that all these difficulties probably won’t just disappear in 6 weeks.

A friend of mine who is a PACE providor offered to help too by giving me some MTC exercises. Possibly that would be helpful….I’m definitely going to consider it and try to make a decision within the next few days.

Laura,

Just out of curiousity, what did you mean when you say your son “forgot” most of what you taught him with PG? Did he forget how to decode new words? One thing I have noticed with my son is that everytime I review the code with him, he makes a burst in reading development but that overtime he seems to forget a large part of the decoding. He retains all the new words he learned—so he tests on grade level for reading—but new words are still an issue.

He is signed up for a PG intensive in December but I have to say I fear he will make progress and forget it!! Of course, each time he does move further along, and maybe that is just the way it is with him.

I was trying today to see words as variations of words he already knows. So he mispronounced “yank”. I wrote “tank” on a white board. I asked him what it said. He told me “tank”. I then said look at this word. And he said “yank”. I did the same with stalk—I showed him talk.

Don’t know if this is a valid approach but seems to me what I do when I am faced with words I don’t know. I try to apply what I do know. My son doesn’t seem to do that.

Beth

Beth — the use of rhyming words is definitely OK, but limited. After a while you meet words that you don’t alreasy know a simple rhyme for. So yes, an OK method to remind a student of a known pattern, but not a central method to hang a program on.

Forgetting phonics over time — hmmm, is the regular class actively anti-phonics? I have seen this and have had students having conflicts with it. I spend an hour plugging away at sounding out — then lovely sweet Miss Jones whom all the kids adore, who cares that they can’t read, tells him five hours a day that he shouldn’t be doing that, that what is important is to make up his own story in his head. Or, we work very very hard at taking your time and getting things right — and then Miss Smith threatens him with all kinds of dire punishments and failure and public ridicule if he doesn’t read fast enough for her.

If the five hours a day is actively rewarding guessing while punishing and ridiculing thinking and accuracy, you have an uphill battle on your hands. It can be done, and as time goes on and guessing is less effective it will work better, but for now you will have to keep up with it. Even a couple of hours a week of oral reading and not accepting errors will make a difference.

When I worked in a private learning center….we use LMB programs but we worked on Seeing Stars and did Read Naturally at the same time. It works to develop fluency and helps the kids put it all together. But to get fluency one needs to read a lot. He has strengths that will help him get over this last hurdle.

Victoria,

My son is 10 and is past the teaching of reading in school so it is not that. I think it is that the advanced code doesn’t go into his long term memory. He reads fairly well now—with reasonable fluency too—it is just that he doesn’t handle new words well.

We used the Scholars check books you like this summer. They are relatively painless and he didn’t mind them too much. We did a couple pages a day.

Beth

Laura,

I think that’s a great idea! You have little to lose in trying it yourself. As you said, even if he does end up going to the clinic later, you’d be able to practice at home and really enhance the instruction. Maybe we can compare notes if we both take it in the fall!

I think poor memory does get in the way of remembering all the possible sound pictures. And the overlap…well it’s a wonder anyone learns to read and spell as far as I am concerned!

Janis

I wrote a nice long message and then the computer crashed!

Beth, even when it seems my son has an orthographic or word pattern memorized, it seems like he eventually forgets it if we don’t regularly practice and go over them (and that means going beyond general reading). My son forgets words he knows. I even noticed him struggle for a short moment tonight trying to remember how to write “g.” That’s something he hasn’t done in a long time! It made me feel a little overwhelmed.

I started working with him this week on S/S. I am having a difficult time getting him to airwrite clearly and accurately. We started with individual letters to get the concept and my son told me he cannot see the letters. I even had him move his fingers down in a scratching movement to help him see and imagine the area where his fingers had been. I can see it. It’s kind of like an optical illusion where my mind fills in where my fingers were. I also had my son close his eyes and try to imagine holding a paintbrush dipping it into red paint and writing the letter “t.” He told me he couldn’t do this either. Then I tried to get him to imagine a brown dog and gave him all sorts of details. He told me he saw a pig and then a cat….so much for my ability to teach this stuff!

I’m not going to give up, but for now I’m adding some other things (like a PG review and vowel team drills) along with the visualization until I get the full kit and find out more about training..

Janis, I’m not sure when I’ll take the training at this time. I need to call and find out when it will be offered in my area. But, I would like to do it soon! It would definitely be interesting to compare notes.

Victoria, I believe my son may be feeling pressured at school to increase his reading speed. I ‘ve noticed an increase in the amount of guessing.

Since he isn’t able to visualize well, you might do Visualizing and Verbalizing by LMB. This specifically teaches the visualization. If it is weak, it may explain why he can’t remember.

—des

Laura, the fall and spring LMB workshops are posted on the web-site, FYI.

Janis

Des,
Although the people at LMB didn’t think he needs V/V, maybe he does. Although I am having a difficult time trying to figure out if he actually has difficulty visualizing, or understanding the concept and knowing what visualization is. Like he thinks it’s an actual picture that’s going to pop up on the wall like a movie! When really it’s less substantial and more internal. Also, I wonder if it’s unusual for visualization to take a long time to establish? In addition, how does one insure that the student is using visual memory as oppossed to auditory memory? For something that would seem easy, I’m finding this kind of mind-boggling.

Janis,
Actually, I did look at the website, but the center closest to me didn’t have classes listed there. I have a flyer with this last Summer’s training dates and I noticed they do workshops there so I was going to call and double check. I’ve been working alot this week so I haven’t had a chance to do much, but I may have time tomorrow.

They don’t talk about this too much in the book. But there is a little reference to it. I mean whetehr or not the child really visualizes. I don’t think you can tell this too much on the picture to picture level, but beyond that, they say if the eyes go up that is a sign there is visualization. Long story on that and it is covered in the book. So you can try this— have him describe something that is not right in front of him, say a pet if he has one. Play a little dumb (you might have to admit you are doing this with your own kid), I find this part easy which I find scary. The kid might say “I have a big dog”. And you say, “Hmm I am seeing a big blue dog”. This forces the kid, with humor, to come up with a better description. (the dog shouldn’t be in the room). Asking comparitive questions helps too. Is the dogs hair long or short or is it bald? Then you go on. Visualized descriptions are rich and detailed that’s another thing. Nonvisualized ones tend to be rather plan and focus on a few things— size, color, things like that. If you don’t have a pet, a neighbors might be ok. I think a cat or dog or horse would be better than a rodent, as they tend to be more alike.

The manual is about $50 and is a very good manual in explaining what you need to do, how you need to go about it, the problems of not having enough visualization, and supplies every thing you need.

There are also a couple books with descriptive passages. They aren’t strictly necessary to the program but are prolly desirable.

HTH,

—des

Des,
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try it. Although I don’t think my son is or has been a good visualizer, he may be getting better at it and that may account for the testing not indicating this. I also think my son may just test well too.

I talked with a guy who helped develop the S/S materials and he told me that visualizing doesn’t just happen immediately. It’s something that can take time to develop. And it’s not unusual for a child to visualize the exercises sometimes and then other times not at all. He also gave me a suggestion. He said I should try having my son visualize his name in a color, and then a few days later ask him what color I had him visualize his name in the other day. If he can recall it, that means he’s visualizing it.

There’s a workshop later this month and I would sign up for it except it’s on Halloween!!!!!! And my husband will be out of town. How disappointing! Instead I found one in November I’m thinking I’ll sign up for. My husband wants to sign my son up for two weeks at the clinic and then have me take over from there (since I’ll have all the materials and my son will have had some practice with visualizing).

In the meantime I’m tyring to get him to visualize a little and review PG. We’re also working a lot on “r controlled vowels” which completely throw him and then differentiating when “c” says “s” or “k.” This he finds completely bewildering.

Thanks for the suggestions Des (and everyone else!). I think I’ll order V/V, and OCN (I need this one for me! :wink:).

I saw this today while working with my student in V/V. I had her describe her pet. I don’t know whether she was visualizing or not, but she is remembering all the structure words anyway and her description was pretty detailed. Then I had her visualize a boat. The scene was absolutely beautiful! I was very floored. As I watched her, her eyes went up and also went to the right (I think).

It made me wonder if she needed it at all, she was described as someone who couldn’t retain stuff. So things went in one ear and out the other.

—des

Des,
That’s interesting. I wonder if your student’s issues might be more attentional than visual.

I was also thinking about the color exercise that was recommended to me. It seems to me that even this could be memorized auditorially. When I did have my son tell me the color he first said “blue” and then quickly corrected himeslf and said “red” (which was the color). But I would think that even this could be memorized auditorially. In fact, he even said something like “I remember you saying red.”

In addition, it almost seems to me that anything that could be memorized visually could be memorized auditorially. Because even if an exercise is done silently, the person could be saying it in their head.

I’ll have to look more closely at my son’s eyes to see if they are looking up. I wonder if the eyes look up for auditory memory?
My son’s descriptions aren’t rich in detail. Perhaps that’s a good indicator of poor visualiziation(?).

Sometimes, I think testing doesn’t give the full picture. For example, at the LMB clinic I was told that a high score on the DTLA test of Word Opposites would indicate strong expressive language skills. My son scored very high on this test, but he seems to have expressive language difficulties (poor word retrieval, a difficult time explaining things…). So other skills may compensate…

>Des,
That’s interesting. I wonder if your student’s issues might be more attentional than visual.

Yes, I wondered if they might be the hypo type of ADD. Or it could even be that since her decoding is so poor she isn’t really reading enough of something, or it is so hard for her that she is expending so much energy on decoding. I have heard it said not to bother much on comprehension if the decoding was poor, and I’m wondering about this myself. Only thing— she completely is stumped by the inference and main idea questions, things that just aren’t in the text. I gave her a little comprehension test and when I got to such a question, she was not able to even think about doing it. Perhaps this is partially something that is taught. And she wasn’t taught it. She kept saying , that’s not in the what I read. Perhaps she was afraid I had a ruler somewhere for a “wrong answer”.

>In addition, it almost seems to me that anything that could be memorized visually could be memorized auditorially. Because even if an >exercise is done silently, the person could be saying it in their head.

Yes, this is true. Nanci Bell refers to this in V/V. The kid will tend to restate what was in the material. “The cat sat under a tree”, with “I saw a cat sitting under a tree” might add a bit of superficial detail, whereas a kid who visualizes it will have all sorts of very specific detail, not just colors or size of cat, etc. but what position the cat is in, what the cat is doing, etc. etc.

>I’ll have to look more closely at my son’s eyes to see if t
hey are looking up. I wonder if the eyes look up for auditory memory?

They do not. This is something called Neurolinguistic programming and has been pretty well established I think. When visualization occurs the eyes go up and maybe to one side (which?).

>My son’s descriptions aren’t rich in detail. Perhaps that’s a good indicator of poor visualiziation(?).

I think that’s true. Look for rephrasing, is he just rephrasing the info and maybe adding a couple superficial details.

I decided to start at the very beginning of OCN, as I am pretty sure she is not visualizing math and I think she has enough visualization to begin it. Anyway, one of the tasks is to visualize nos. in colors. When I told her to visualize a yellow 3 on a black background, she was quite specific, her eyes did not go up but she said she could see herself writing it with a gel pen. And when I suggested a white 10 on black, she said she saw herself writing with chalk. Again I was pretty surprised at this!

Perhaps I have a kid who needs permission to do this!!

>Sometimes, I think testing doesn’t give the full picture. For example, at the LMB clinic I was told that a high score on the DTLA test of Word Opposites would indicate strong expressive language skills. My son scored very high on this test, but he seems to have expressive language difficulties (poor word retrieval, a difficult time explaining things…). So >other skills may compensate…[/quote]

Well the tests all have limitations. The test only measures what the test measures. Since i have a learning disability as well, I have been given many standard tests. One was given by an audiologist and was
“sound in noise”. This was supposedly good. But the test consisted of isolated words in noise which is hardly the real life experience of listening to words in a noisy restaurant, say. I would contend that I am much worse than average, judging from my responses vs my peers. OTOH a good tester ‘should” pick up on some problems like word retrieval. I actually had what might have been an informal test on that, and the tester commented that I often said “thing” or some other word instead of indicating the actual item. But I think she overrated it and I think my word retrieval problems are more than a little mild. I always have said that I’m happy I have a good vocabulary because over half of it is unavailable at any given time!
:-)

—des

Des — picking up on a couple of points in your post —

Yes, needing permission to visualize is common. I actually had a student *apologize* to me for working visually — she had been made to feel that it was very very wrong. This after I had spent a month trying with al my might to teach a visual approach to math, graphing etc., which is vital in college. No wonder the class went completely over most of the students’ heads.
Another teacher told me of a Grade 4 class where she was trying to get the students to diagram something, and they resisted all her efforts; finally one brave kid spoke up and said that they had been told in previous years that they were now “too old” to draw pictures.

There was a second point but I have forgotten it and this new system only shows me page 1 to reply to. Back in another post.

Oh, yeah, the second point was fear of wrong answers, which I only used as the title. Oh well, I have an excuse to be out of it, having broken a rib on the world’s worst fall canoe-camping trip in freezing rain (full details to anyone who has a weird sense of humour and can enjoy it — just ask
[email protected])

Fear of wrong answers is quite common, and a lot of well-meaning but misguided people set this going with kids — sometimes teachers, sometimes parents, sometimes older kids. You see students who are absolutely paralyzed unless they can copy the absolutely exact right answer down. And if any line is slightly out of place they erase and erase and put everything absolutely exact.
Take some time developing a relaxed and informal atmosphere where she knows you are on her side, and just talk about things and joke around. Ask her what she thinks about the story, what she thinks about the characters, whether she would act like that, and so on. Get her to use her imagination a little with “what if” questions about the story. It takes time to develop critical reading skills, but if you work on it in a natural fashion with discussion as issues come up, the written form will come much more easily later.

Des,
I only know from my own experience helping both my children learn to read. But, I had always felt comprehension was the most important element. This belief came about when my daughter was younger and she didn’t learn to read until a little later than some of her peers. She had remarkably good comprehenison, and no indications of any possible LDs except for a lack of patience in learning to read (although I do remember her having very sloppy writing pre-4th grade). I remember my friend’s daughter reading quite well in Kindergarten while my daughter really didn’t read until 3rd grade. Now in 8th grade my daughter had to take a test and she tested at a post-college reading level (99%ile in national testing), while my friend’s daughter has some reading problems and I was told is struggling in Jr. High.

But then with my son and his decoding problems, that has altered my opinion a little bit. When he was younger I realized he did have comprehension problems so we spent a great deal of time working on comprehension (I’d constantly ask questions so he had to demonstrate he was listening, understanding and could rephrase the content).

Because of this experience, I personally think it doesn’t hurt to work on comprehenison in addition to decoding (but not at the expense of it. That was my mistake! Not to work on the decoding problems earlier and not just assume my son would be like my daughter and reading would just click…sure it might click someday, but not without an enormous amount of work and intervention). My son definitely has an LD and I can clearly see the difference.

One more thing, your student’s lack of comprehension could be attentional too. Or maybe she is still having some difficulties in visualization. I could be wrong on this, but I think good visualization skills take time to develop and become habit.

And yet, like Victoria says, fear of error is a possibility as well. When my son was first tested in 2nd grade, the school psychologist felt his slowness was due to perfectionism. At this point, I’m pretty sure that’s not the entire reason, but I do think it may contribute to his “slowness.”

Gosh, these mysteries can be so difficult to unravel!

By the way, while working with my son this morning (he’s off school for the week), I did notice him looking up a few times when we worked on visualizing words. So I think he may be starting to get it a little! And guess what!!! My S/S kit just arrived this very moment! It’s soo heavy.

How interesting about your word retrieval difficulties. I wonder if a good vocabulary “masks” this. And if so, maybe that’s great way to help remediate it or at least minimize it. (In addition to Beth’s RAN exercises!).

I have noticed a shift in attitude that i think shoudl be conducive to learning. She has become much more relaxed. We do talk a bit. I have a dog and two cats and they are really part of my therapeutic environment (except for Padfoot who has to be sequestered). She often sits and pets Torie (dog) during the sessions. I think we have found a mutual love of animals.

V/V (the reading comprehension) program and OCN for math both encourage relaxed atmosphere. I always start with V/V, which seems to be good after a school day. Her images are very good and but I am taking my time going thru this, as it seems calming and fun and a different sort of thing than they do in school.

I think this *is* a kid that needs permission to visualize.

As for the attentional issues, not sure yet. She can really work on something a long time— but that in itself doesn’t mean she doesn’t have these problems, may be able to hyper focus.

—des

Hey, Beth!!!

I would suggest purchasing the Sound Reading CD for constant and no pressure/minimal time review

We just finished the entire program(today) and I am very impressed with how far my son has come in decoding. But I worry it will vanish as it has in the past(although he has NEVER been this good before)

I plan to utilize the CD regularly-I have no idea if he can finish it or beat it like a video game. I will climb that mountain when I get there

SR also provides cardboard materials for “5 minute warm up” which I intend to keep using. They are columns of syllables and you match them up to make nonsense words.

Example:

I choose a syllable from card one-use an index card to underline it(there are 30 in a column)

I choose ‘pub’

I then run the other syllable strip down next to it so he reads

pub-farm
pub-fat
pub-fect

etc, etc

It has helped a ton, especially with the tough ones like ‘tion’

They HAVE to sound out nonsense words-they cant guess. For my guy, that has been key. No more guessing to keep Ms. Jones happy ;)

Marycas,

Thanks for the information. This sounds good for maybe next summer. We’re very swamped with school this year but I do have him going to a PG intensive right before Christmas.

Beth

Beth

Im not wanting to sound like a saleperson for Sound Reading but just a quick mention that you could do the CD without purchasing and utilizing the entire program IF he already has been exposed to the concepts through another program like PG or tutoring

It isnt exactly Mario Brothers, but my son doesnt object to doing 15 min of it.

If he has most the concepts and you are just looking to KEEP them active, it would be a relatively inexpensive suggestion and twice a week wouldnt interfere too much with what Im sure is an increasing workload at school

But yes, for doing the entire SR program I would recommend waiting until a break from school

And, now I will shut up :)

marycas,

I think it is a good sign when a parent sees enough progress with their child to want to “sell” a program!!

Maybe it would be a good followup to the PG intensive…thanks for the suggestion.

Beth