Similarities/Differences between Barton & LMB?

Patti and I may be it here, afaik. Barton is really a modernized, adapted OG. There are elements that are similar to some of LiPS and V/V. For example, to introduce the vowels she has the kids listen to a story and visualize it (the first story is about “apple” and finding and apple in a store, etc.). Another example is to teach the spelling of sight words, she has the kid visualize it on the wall, etc. There are also elements of tracking ala LiPS. The first book is entirely phonemic awareness, and uses almost all nonsense words. The sounds are tracked— you say “sif” the child pulls down three colored tiles with no letters and says the sounds by touching each tile. This is just about identical to a step in LiPS. Other similarities esp. at that level.

She also uses many mnemonic tricks like LMB, for example LiPS uses memory hooks to tie the production of sounds to the shape of the “p” and “b” for instance. Barton also uses lots of hooks like this.

Susan Barton was trained in ten different OG programs and in all the LMB reading programs and that shows.

The difference is that it pretty much follows the scope and sequence of OG.
Starts with some consonants and a vowel at a time goes to CVC words, syllable types, to multisyllables. The pieces are very similar to someone who has had any background with any OG based method. She provides names for the rules (vs nos say), for example, “Kiss the cat” is the rule which explains whether a “c” or a “k” starts a word with the /k/ sound.

There is a bit heavier load for spelling than traditional OG, I think roughly half of it is spelling. Though I’m guessing the spelling helps the reading.
There is no handwriting, unlike some of the OG programs (ie Spalding).

There are the colored tiles with different colors for vowels, consonants, units (ie all, ing, etc.), etc. similar to many Orton systems . There are levels, like Wilson, etc. Keywords like many OG systems— though not as heavy an emphasis.

There is some work on fluency, reading in phrasing, etc. which is most beneficial to the kids I’m working with at least. IME, not typical of OG. Some of the more recent research on reading is in Barton.

It’s also packaged so that a motivated parent with good phonological skills can do it.

You might be interested in seeing the free video. you don’t even pay for shipping. I got one email after I got the video but after that no pressure to buy. It tells about the program and gives a few demos of different aspects.

—des

Another comment: There is a screening test to see if your kid could do the program. She expects the kid can hear the sounds adequately, even though there is some phonological awareness in the program. A kid that is unable to do the task is recommended to: a. deal with attention issues or memory issues, if it is more of an attention/ memory problem b. if it is actually hearing the sounds then use of LiPS first. Also expects them to be able to count number of syllables and also number of words in a sentence.
There is also a tutor screening that checks out if you have adequate phonological awareness to hear the kid’s errors and so forth.

I said something about names for rules vs. nos (I meant numbers.). For example, some of the OG programs (ie Spalding) use rule number __. The name of the rule in Barton is a mnemomic for the rule. In Wilson for example the letters f, l, s and also z are said to be bonus letters as you double them after a one syllable word with one vowel. Rule 17 in Spalding. In Barton it’s called the floss rule. FL SS are in the word floss and the word follows the rule.

Still not sure if the program is very specific to a pretty straight RAN type dyslexia. IF the kid has good decoding skills, I’d tend to go to SS and maybe some fluency program like “Great Leaps”, say. If the kid can’t decode, then he needs something else. SS is not really for kids with poor decoding, but kids who can’t put the words they decode into visual memory. They end up decoding EVERYTHING. Very slow that way! I think some of the other fluency programs deal more with the repetition aspect— the more you read, essentially the more fluent you become. There is some fluency practice in Barton, but not like a dedicated fluency program.

HTH,

—des

I gave my love of Barton in a post further down the list. The website www.bartonreading.com has lots of info on dyslexia, famous people with LD, etc.. etc..

I like the way that the creator says the program is not inteneded for people with MR or ELD with an English speaking level below 2nd grade. If you follow the ideas and directions it sure does improve fluency. Plus with no pictures you can coach to increase visualization.

With the funny rules, I’ve had kids tell me why they gote 100% on their class spelling test, “Because of the kiss the cat rule. First I didn’t know if I should use C or K, the I remembered the rule.” It transfers into classwork!

It is also a program that teaches adults to read. I have had huge interest in Lindamood Bell, it is just very segmented and disjointed and I have had a hard time understanding it to present it. EXCEPT verbalizing and visualizing. That 1 is easy to use, and kids like it.

The worst 3rd grade readers in the school were taught Barton level 1,2, and 3 and made honor roll in 4th grade with no modifications to their grades!!! They WILL start level 4!

Kendra,

I will agree that LMB is not easy, and I am interested in your comments on Barton. But I wanted to ask you, did you mean you took LMB training and then felt it was hard to implement, or were you trying to use it from the manuals? I’m just curious.

Janis

Hey Kendra, another Barton user! So we can compare notes. I have really just started using it and have two kids in it. One of them is already on book 3 (almost 4) but did have some Wilson, so that explains that— she knew the sounds already. The other is on book 2, bad spelling only. I am hoping that the rule names mnemonics will help her with her spelling. My first student is just doing great. I see her correcting her spelling herself and her grades have gone from Cs and Ds to Bs in reading.

However, I do have a kid I am doing LiPS with. Sadly I don’t have the training but I am doing the program with very extensive study (perhaps hours and hours ) and he is also making progress. He did not pass the Barton screening so that is what was recommended. She is very clear about who can benefit and who will not, and she does not feel that a kid without the abilities in the screening can do well in her program. You still the capacity to hear the sounds, even though there is a book dedicated solely to phonemic awareness and the second book to just the short vowels and consonants and about 5 digraphs.

I have noticed that my first student is reading more fluently btw. The little exercise of seeing the who, does what, where is a great one for the kiddos to break up the sentences the way good readers do, but I havent’ got enough experience to say how well it works for fluency. Still I am watching her read the material at her level with phrasing and even a little feeling.
Her favorite (and mine) part is where you read the “who phrases” “did what phrases” and “where phrases” and make up sentences. Even at the book 2 level the kids can do:
“The ham/ ran/ in the big pan.”

The possible humor is great for teaching reading!

However, I do think the LMB is just designed for different kind of kids. Barton really doesn’t address the good decoder, poor visual memory kid like SS does either.

—des

Thanks for the replies! I think my son’s issues are more visual memory. Although he has been a wonderful decoder in the past somehow he eventually begins forgetting how to decode. Even with plenty of reading practice. It’s very frustrating. Yesterday we worked on a book report. He was going to read “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” but he had such extreme difficulty I finally asked him to read off every letter on the page just to find out if he could actually “see” and name the letters! In two paragraphs he did a fine job, but in two intances he reversed or missed letters and on the last line he began reading the letters in the sentence from right to left! So I do know directionality is still an issue.

We did do the testing at LMB and they didn’t feel my son needs LIPS. They also didn’t think he needs VV or OCN, but I think he does.

Unfortunately for this book report, our teacher assigned it only days ago and it’s due Wednesday! There’s no way on earth my son can read a chapter book within this time frame (We need 2-3 weeks!). I finally broke down and had my son get a book on tape at the library. It’s 3 hours and he’s doing quite well at listening, and then summarizing each chapter. He has difficulty organizing sentences and explaining things (a true dyslexic!), but it’s soo much easier for him.

Anyhow, sorry to keep going on and on here! I did run into a woman at the Dyslexia seminar I recently went to and she mentioned that her son went to the LMB clinic over the summer (he entered 6th grade this year).
She said that after LMB her son was taken out of Resource and the teachers are amazed by how well he’s reading. She said she still feels there are some problems. Her son reads too quickly and sometimes will skip over tiny words (possibly a vision problem?), and he has problems with writing (although I remember reading here that writing often takes more time to develop. Solid reading needs to occur before good writing can develop).

I still plan to take my son to the LMB clinic (and go into debt!). But Barton sounds good too. Perhaps a good follow-up if we don’t see progress after LMB….

Have you considered PACE or Audiblox for memory and directionality?

HI!

I should have clarified this! The Barton reading and spelling program is a one stop buy - per level. You get the easy to follow training videos, tiles, and kids reading sheets and worksheets. You don’t have to put it together. (Or get the choice to) She also recommends www.highnoon books for ex: all short vowels when the student is at that stage. Inexpensive easy readers that seem to match what Barton teaches for lots of reading practice.

I should first aknowledge that she does recommend LMB for kids that don’t pass a screener test and need more intense auditory descrimination (or something - I am not quoting here). I have also heard good things about LMB!!

It’s just that the catalog has a pretty big set of stuff for 1 program, then the seeing stars book without kid’s work, then other parts of the program, and sentence workbooks which I think are for homophones, and multi-syllable workbooks. I just couldn’t spend enough $$ to see what it was that I’d need for a particular problem. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

I do use Verballizing and Visuallizing for kids that can read but don’t think while they read. They don’t think about comprehending. It is real good for that!

The Barton System took all the guesswork out of it for me. I am teaching 5 kids that I know are truly LD, and I have another 4 starting in gr 2 and they are able to do it! My school uses a lot of guided reading. We actually don’t have an adopted language arts program. Regardless, I can use whatever I want in the resource room as long as it matches assessed needs and the needs were that the kids can’t read!! (they could read some sight words)

>It’s just that the catalog has a pretty big set of stuff for 1 program, then the seeing stars book without kid’s work, then other parts of the program, and sentence workbooks which I think are for homophones, and multi-syllable workbooks. I just couldn’t spend enough $$ to see what it was that >I’d need for a particular problem. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

It is work to go thru, I’ll agree with that. However, I don’t think that the LMB programs are at all the same as anything else out there. There are some kids, for example, with good decoding skills who will never remember the words they decode. Everytime in they are needing to decode. SS is the only program I know of, might be others, that deal with that. True it is tricky, and I think almost really requires the training (though I think it is doable without it). I’d guess many people are quite confused with it. I don’t think you have a prayer of understanding it if you are not able to put hours into it. The same could be said for LiPS. The kids who need this just can’t hear the sounds, and you have to hear them to do Barton or other OG program or PG, for that matter.

>I do use Verballizing and Visuallizing for kids that can read but don’t think while they read. They don’t think about comprehending. It is real good for that!

Well I wouldn’t say they don’t think about what they read but there visualization is so poor they aren’t ABLE to think about it.

>The Barton System took all the guesswork out of it for me. I am teaching 5 kids that I know are truly LD, and I have another 4 starting in gr 2 and they are able to do it! My school uses a lot of guided reading. We actually don’t have an adopted language arts program. Regardless, I can use

It might be a negative for some people who don’t want to work with such a scripted program. However, I have found that familarity makes you able to be creative with it. It is nice to have everything all there though.
Uh Oh guided reading. It’s really good that you are willing to put the money and time into the Barton system so your kids will actually learn to read!!

For me it was great to have the training come to me, out here in the hinterlands. :-)

—des

>[quote=”Laura in CA”]Thanks for the replies! I think my son’s issues are more visual memory. Although he has been a wonderful decoder in the

It sounds to me like this may be more a case of visual and auditory memory problems than the usual dyslexic profile. There also seem to be issues with directionality. I think this is a pretty complex case. I agree with the need here to work on the visual, auditory memory and directionality first. I am not so knowledgable about this but I think others may have some ideas. (For example, I can’t recommend audiobox as I have never seen it, but I think this is the kind of direction you need to go in.)

>We did do the testing at LMB and they didn’t feel my son needs LIPS. The
y also didn’t think he needs VV or OCN, but I think he does.

Perhaps they thought that his visualization was adequate. I would take that into consideration, as there seems to be plenty to work on here.

>hapter book within this time frame (We need 2-3 weeks!). I finally broke down and had my son get a book on tape at the library. It’s 3 hours and he’s doing quite well at listening, and then summarizing each chapter. He has difficulty organizing sentences and explaining things (a true dyslexic!), but it’s soo much easier for him.

You might work specifically on this. Try to get say a main idea: “this is about ______”. Then have him give three substantiating points. Then explain them with three points. Then do a summary. I saw this used very nicely in a high risk ld room. One of the kids even did an essay for me, “Why I hate probation”!! :-) When divided up this may help him. Another thing might be the software program(s): Inspiration or Kidspiration, depending on age. And Draftbuilder. See www.donjohnston.com.

>Anyhow, sorry to keep going on and on here! I did run into a woman at thDyslexia seminar I recently went to and she mentioned that her son went to the LMB clinic over the summer (he entered 6th grade this year).
She said that after LMB her son was taken out of Resource and the teachers are amazed by how well he’s reading. She said she still feels there are some problems. Her son reads too quickly and sometimes will skip over tiny words (possibly a vision problem?), and he has problems with writing (although I remember reading here that writing often takes more time to develop. Solid reading needs to occur before good writing can develop).

I think it may be tricky to compare your child with others. Like this kid went thru LMB or this one did Barton and so on. Your child does seem to have some unique needs.

—des
I still plan to take my son to the LMB clinic (and go into debt!). But Barton sounds good too. Perhaps a good follow-up if we don’t see progress after LMB….[/quote]

I think the word retrieval and memory problems make his reading problems more difficult to remediate. That’s one of the reason’s I like LMB is the emphasis on visualization and visual memory for words.

Interestingly, in my area the hourly cost of the LMB clinic and Barton tutoring is the same. In fact, the Barton testing is more expensive than the LMB clinic’s testing. So costwise, if I want to take a little break from being my son’s tutor, it’s less expensive for me to go with LMB.

How old is your son, what grade and how has reading achievement testing progressed over the years? What services, reading-wise, does he get now? There are some kids who do progress very slowly, but need daily(ie 40-60 minutes of reading practice) work…if he gets this and is still “forgetting”, I’d look at an eval. of ADD and executive functioning.

Hi SAR,
My son is now 9 in 4th grade and we’ve been working very diligently on reading for the last 2-3 years (Phonographix, Glass Analysis, some S/S at home, fluency drills and constantly going over orthographic patterns over and over and over!). In school my son gets NO services whatsoever. He’s been tested quite a bit since 1st grade, but he does not qualify. The only low scores were in RAN, word retrieval and cognitive fluency. But at least this year he has a teacher who recognizes there’s a problem. Last year in 3rd the teacher acted as if I were crazy and that it was normal for third graders not to recognize “th” or automatically know the word “was,” or “could.”

I think you’ve mentioned your son has low RAN too. Is your son in this category of needing extensive daily practice/slow improvement? If so, how does he keep up with peers. Like, for example, on reports? Surprisingly, my son doesn’t do too badly in school considering he reads very slowly and inaccurately and goes to an elementary school with a reputation for high achieving students.

I know my son has more issues than reading. There’s tactile defensiveness (a major issue. Right now in winter he refuses to wear anything but shorts and short-sleeved or sleeveless shirts! I’m sure everyone at our school thinks I’m the worst parent on the planet :-(

One thing that worries me about ADD is getting a reliable evaluation. I think tests like the Conner’s are pretty subjective.

Now in 7th grade my son does “fine-A’s, etc.), but in my eyes does not achieve like a very very bright student should, but in his eyes it is OK, so we backed off. However, he had years of services in school and privately, and did steadily gain accuracy and fluency(although reading rate is low). He never had probs. with attention/behavior/social skills so his main problem was academic. Yes, his core deficits(that I don’t expect will improve much) are academic fluency and RAN….however, his academic performance has improved hugely, so we assume he compensates. His spelling and handwriting are the biggest probs in middle school, although he is not alone in these areas!! I disagree that evals of ADD are subjective, search on the BASC eval tool.

Laura,

I have no answers but I did want to tell you my son does the same thing with decoding. He will get a boost in decoding if we spend time reviewing but then he seems to “forget” what he learns. He retains the words he knows—I would liken it to an adult who has a reading vocabulary but needs to hear a word before he or she can learn it.

His RAN tests normal now so, at least for my son, that doesn’t seem to be the key. I too suspect it is visualization and have been looking into LMB for next summer. We’re going to a PG intensive in two weeks and my biggest fear is that he will forget what he learns!! I have looked into following up with SS but the clinic near me won’t do less than two hours a day, which just isn’t doable.

My son too has some add-inattentive symptoms so that may be part of story too.

It sure isn’t easy.

Beth

I have seen the whole gamut as an SLP and I have found the kids with Sensory Integration disorders don’t make progress until the Sensory issues are dealt with. It is because their sensory issues interfere with their attention, they are distracted either by noises, smells, sights, movement. I have some students who are so sensory seeking that they can’t give eye contact or have any communicative intent. Some of the OT’s have put them on a Sensory Diet and what a difference this makes for the children. There really is something to a Sensory Diet by providing things such as chewy toys, weighted vests, sitting on cushy balls, movement, swings, koosh balls, brushing their skin, music therapy, that kind of thing…

The sensory diet calms the Sensory seeking behaviors down so that teachers can remediate and work with them.. Being diagnosed ADD isn’t the end of the world either and neither is having a sensory integration disorder. Once one knows what the issues are they can be dealt with accordingly.

SAR,
What a great accomplishment for your son (and it also reflects on your dedication as a parent!).

Patti,
Can it be that Sensory Integration issues never really do resolve? My son had a few years of OT for SID when he was a baby/toddler, and I had him climb, hang, play with sand, throw balls while swinging, etc…. every day for an hour after school, for many years! Also, I’ve enrolled him in sports, ice skating, martial arts and even bought a large, safety-netted trampoline for my back yard.

But maybe, even when these kids don’t “appear” to be affected by SID, they still are. Maybe the problems can only be reduced, but never fully resolved?

Beth,
Good luck with the PG intensive! We’re probably going to do LMB next month (take advantage of Winter Break!). I did notice that even with the small amount of SS I’ve been doing with him at home, it seemed to help. (At least my husband noticed a difference and commented on it). But the real question is… just how effective would a more intensive program be and and will it “stick?”

It’s so hard to tell when SI issues are affecting a person — it’s like pain, totally subjective — only more so, since at least we all have some idea of what “pain” means but not necessarily what “annoying” or “distracting” is…. it’s not exaclty pain…
On anther list a fellow posted that *all* folks with nonverbal learning disorders had SI issues… I suggested otherwise but I”m afraid I couldn’t come up with a single example to support that. Everybody I know even with “tendencies” towards NLD also have strange sensitivities (or lack thereof), or visual-spatial issues. (I still wouldn’t want somebody to think “well, I am not going to check out NLD for my child, because she doen’st have SI issue.”)

if they are fully resolved. Just look at all the issues and see what he is still craving.. of what sets him off….perhaps that is the key that you need to unlock the rest of the puzzle.

We discovered today that one of the kids loves music with a particular video, he was like a different child…WOW…This sensory stuff just amazes me…because it has to be dealt with so I can work with the kids on language.

I think that it is possible that SI issues never get resolved. I had OT (I was an adult) and I have worked on satifying certain SI needs I have. For example, I sleep with a long pillow at on one side and lots of weight on me.
If I don’t have those things for some reason, I sleep fitfully if at all. There are other things as well, but now that I am an adult (I think anyway :-)). I can do some of these things without too much trouble to those around me.

BTW, Sue.. as for NLD without SI problems, not sure. I would guess that sometimes the parent might not be aware of them, for example if they are mild or subtle. Or maybe they might be interpreted as something else.
For example, if the kid is restless sleeping it may be interpreted as the kid having trouble sleeping and not a need for deep pressure. Or disliking crowds when it might be visual and auditory confusion.

—des