HELP! Using LMB materials

Well no way around this one but one way or another you need to spend some really serious time with the manuals. I don’t mean reading them (or even reading them well). I mean get out the materials and go through as if you are teaching them. Actually practicing the concepts really helps you understand them, and you can’t understand them if you don’t actually practice them. It would be really helpful if you had a person to practice on/with. But lacking that you can kind of play both sides. IMO, OCN is perhaps the easiest to teach, the best done manual and the most user friendly. This is followed by V/V. I have heard of quite a no. of people doing these successfully without training. (Although not to say it wouldn’t be useful, particularly V/V). It is really important to understand the concepts as well as how to go about doing them.

SS is a bit tougher imo. I haven’t actually tried to teach this one. There are some parents that have used it without the training but it is more difficult and not so user friendly. I find it logical, but the pacing on this one is probably the most hard to figure out. In OCN, for example, the pacing is easiest to understand and I find myself less sure on the V/V.

You didn’t mention LiPS but even this is possible without the training, not that I am recommending it or anything. But it really requires LOTS of study, in the hours and hours range, and a speech background doesn’t hurt either.

Anyway, I’m not sure what kind of advice I have just given.

Hope this helps somehow.

—des[/url]

Oh yeah, I don’t think any of these programs are for kids with decoding problems. SS is mainly for kids who though they can decode can’t remember the forms of the words so they are terribly slow readers having to decode everything. It also would be helpful for poor spellers who spell entirely phonetically.

V/V is a program for kids with poor comprehension, who may or may not have decoding problems as well (usually not).

—des

As a parent at home using SS, I can see it as “doable” without training, but you may not be as effective teaching it until you’ve gone through training. (And then again, maybe you’ll be quite effective!).

My suggestion is to start with one program, read the manual very carefully and then come up with a strategy and dive in! You can also call LMB and ask questions. I talked with someone there who patiently answered mine. I think one good thing about becoming familiar with the program prior to training is you’ll have a better idea what questions you need to ask at training and you’ll have a good understanding of the programs.

You sound like a wonderful teacher. I think you’re going to do great!!! :-)

Thanks for all of your replies and suggestions. I do appreciate them. This was my first post. I’ve been scanning and reading the bb for the past year or so. There is a tremendous amount of information on these boards that is beneficial to veteran teachers. I have taught for 11 years w/ the majority of those years spent in a resource room setting. I happened upon this site while I was working on my MSE in Mild Disabilities. I do have the “little yellow book” (Orton Phonics). I worked for Dr. Lucia Karnes in NC one summer. I may decide to use the Orton phonics until I get the LMB training if I don’t feel I’m using the LMB materials effectively. Thanks again for the encouragement.
Tracy

Tracy,

des is right that if these kids need decoding instruction, then the LMB manuals you have won’t help. You’ll have to take them through a decoding program first. With des as a notable exception, I would not recommend doing LiPS without training. I took Seeing Stars training last week, and there’s no way I would have really used it correctly without the training. But it would come AFTER (or in conjunction with) a decoding program to help the child develop symbol imagery for automatic word recognition. You’d need the kit, too, as there are a million cards that go with it. One reason it is hard is that they want you to use particular questioning techniques and this is harder than it sounds on the surface. Plus, they told us that in an hour session, they do as many as 8 different Seeing Stars activities, so you need to understand how to overlap levels. As I sit here and say this, I still do not have the confidence that I can do it right! Lol!

If you buy the V/V videos, that will help you implement V/V. But honestly, I gained SO much from that training, too. OCN is the easiest to do without training, but it strongly depends on visualization skills and says not to start a child in OCN until they are in the sentence by sentence level of V/V. So it actaully is pretty complex when you get into it. You could more easily do OCN (without training) after you have taken V/V training.

Either use the little yellow Orton book to teach decoding or pick up a copy of Reading Reflex (the Phono-Graphix method). I use PG with the LMB programs because I feel that very few kids really need LiPS. And PG was developed by soemone who had been trained in LiPS and knew most kids could use a more streamlined approach.

It will help you to read each manual just before you go for training, however. Good luck! LMB has great programs, but it is a lot to learn!

Janis

But you may want to investigate Reading Reflex to get you by until you can get further training. The programs you mentioned do not help kids with decoding problems. Once you get them throught the decoding piece then you can work on the fluency piece with Read Naturally or Great Leaps. I am an SLP and I am trained in LMB programs, LiPS is probably the hardest one for people to master because it is so heavy into the way that speech and language pathologists learn about phonology. However, we use these funky symbols to represent phonetic sounds but we use the cognate pairs approach that LMB presents, we use the voicing aspect and the vowel circle.

You go girl!! you can do this!!

Oh I am NOT recommending doing LiPS without training. I am doing ok, but I have only heard of maybe 2 people who have done it without training besides myself. It does help that I have some speech background, no doubt. As you say, there is some speech pathology references (I did learn— not that I remember, all the real names for the sound labels) and so on to it. THe other thing is that most kids do not need it. I’d say it would be overkill in most cases anyway. So NO I am not recommending it.
And I do plan to take the training when I can. If I could have figured out who to refer this kid to, I would prolly have done it. Though I really am enjoying it. And my student, who had no clue as per the sounds is getting them now. But then LiPS is very asperger friendly. :-)

I think I have heard of a few people doing SS without training and I don’t think it would be easy! (haven’t tried it). The manual is not terribly user friendly. It does not give you very much of a clue re: pace. I think that might be the biggest obstacle. The other problem with SS is that while the manual gives you the various syllables there are maybe a thousand of them. The syllables are the most expensive portion of the package.

I think V/V is a bit more doable, and I have heard of many people doing it without the training. I’m sure the training would be very helpful.

Not related to reading: but I think that OCN is the easiest of the manuals. Very user friendly. Very easy to follow. I think the pacing is the biggest iffy issue, but then again there is more in the manual that would be helpful on this. I think it is interesting that this is the last one written, though.

Unfortunately the only one dealing with decoding is LiPS.

The weakness of the manuals, imo, is the little dialogue. Rest assured your kids will not respond like they do in the dialogue!! A more helpful way of approaching it would have been a more scope and sequence type approach. I think they want you to get the idea of the questioning technique. Very hard to get used to, imo.

There are several more user friendly programs out there— which do get discussed a lot.

—des

Oh sorry, I guess you did not imply I meant that you should go and do LiPS without training. I have a real bad head cold and prolly reading wrong. Need to get out that V/V. BTW, have noticed that kids with bad congestion can’t really do V/V.

—des