Would V/V really help this child?

Just a thought-did you call Calif home office??? When I did they spoke to me for almost and hour and I asked very detailed questions. Basically I was trying to assess if I could do Lips myself or needed to come to a clinic.You might try again and you might get a clinician whose willing to talk. When I called the materials shop person she admitted she didn’t know very much but did transfer me to clinician

Susan,

I have also spoken with Lindamood-Bell (in CA) and have talked with people who use their material extensively. Everyone (not LB) has told me that I can buy the kit and use it myself. I am going to buy the training tapes as a matter of fact, and I may work out a way to lend them out. The manual is supposed to be easy to follow, though.

One question, you gave a 125 IQ score, but what were the verbal and performance (non-verbal) scores? From what you are saying, it sounds like the verbal would be higher. If there is a big discrepancy between the verbal and performance score, the full scale score isn’t very meaningful.

Have you looked at the LB site? They do give characteristics of students who would benefit from each program. From what you have said, it does sound like it would be good for him. Joan and a few others on here use V/V and I’m sure will come and give some input when they see your post.

Janis

at home, just using the book. A very similar program that is scripted (complete lesson plans, etc.) is IdeaChain by Mindprime, http://www.mindprime.com. IdeaChain is about $250, I think.

Mary

Janis,

To answer your question re: IQ. There was little difference between the verbal and performance scores on the WISC so the examiner did state that he felt the IQ overall score was a true representation of his abilities. I spoke with a clinic on the east coast of Fl which was the nearest facility that had the V/V program. I will try the Calif. location. Thanks.

Mary,

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, I have not been successful with home programs for my son. He does much better with a “non-parent ” teacher.

Susan,

Then that’s a very good sign! 125 V and P is a strong score and probably allows your child to compensate well. I’ll bet V/V will be very good for him!

Janis

Susan,

You may already know this, but Lindamood-Bell will not recommend anyone other than their own clinics, so you will be on your own to find a trained LB tutor.

Janis

And boy, that’s the most annoying thing about LMB! They hold training classes open to anybody - teacher or parent - but then they really pressure people to send their kids directly to their centers. I realize that it’s a financial issue more than anything else (they don’t want to put their own centers out of business) but I think they do a disservice to parents who then don’t send their kids because they can’t afford such exorbitant rates. And so many of these parents don’t know that the LMB courses can easily be taught by parents.

Susan, feel free to email me about V/V program in depth. Or you can do a search for V/V on these boards. I’ve posted alot about it as have some others.

Since you mentioned that your son won’t respond to you well as his teacher, you’ll need to look for someone else to provide the V/V training. You can call any neuropsyches in your area to ask for a referral to someone who does this or you can call private schools in your area and ask the same. I get many referrals from these sources.

All it takes is the book to teach V/V -everything else can be made by copying the blackline masters in the back of the book. You also need some little felt squares although construction paper works in a pinch. So you might, if you get no leads from the sources I mentioned above, ask a trusted tutor to learn this program. I’ve seen this done. There are lots of tutors who want to learn it - if you provide one with a book and the materials copied from the masters in the back, I’m betting you’ll get someone interested in teaching it. You ought to get a cut rate too since they’ll be new at it.

From what you describe, it does sound as though V/V would be helpful. I’m curious, though, about your saying that “it’s in there but he has difficulty getting it out”. Was there ever a referral to a speech and language person?

Joan

What an interesting thought. Having worked with individuals who are aphasiac from CVAs, I can understand the suggestion and have seen the frustration when they can’t get out their thought. My son’s problem doesn’t really mimic that behavior - he seems almost clueless until someone starts cueing him by saying something like “what about when…” or “what happened after that?” Once he starts he can usually go on with only a little assistance although generally it’s just a list of events that tells the story. He cannot really synopsize or give a theme re: the story such as “the two boys did something wrong but realized that telling the truth was the right thing to do.” It’s possible to get this concept out of him eventually but its like pulling teeth (or giving birth!) Perhaps I am expecting too much from a third grader but that’s what the school (private) expects. I’ll take to his psych re: such an evaluation. Thanks

Joan,

I agree! Did you see my post elsewhere that most all the courses will be offered at the Charlotte, NC clinic near me this summer?! I was so thrilled and then I was told I would get NO money towards the fees from my school system. :-( .

Janis

Susan,

I do think third grade is on the borderline of being able to expect a child to give a synopsis. Honestly, my child (first grade) is in an academically demanding school and sometimes I think no wonder she has trouble!!! Her last spelling assessment had these words (not a weekly test, she had never had these words, they expect them to spell them from the phonics knowledge): argue, station, chill, express, stumble. Good grief, whatever happened to words like man, hat, clap, skip, etc. in first grade??? I keep her there thus far because there are several advantages that outweigh the disadvantages. But do realize that part of your child’s problem may be the curriculum and not him.

Janis

Janis, Do they really expect that those words are to be used as a spelling list and nothing else or is it a holistic approach where the students do lots of other things with the words such as learn what they mean, use them in sentences, alphabetize, etc.? Sure seems ridiculous to me to have 6 and 7 year olds memorizing the spelling of those words!

You say this was an assessment — was it a list of words from easier to more difficult, which would find out where the child is? In that case it would make sense to have words such as this in the more difficult section.

Argue, chill, station, and stumble are all likely to be in the speech or at least listening vocabulary, and possibly reading vocabulary, of an advanced seven-year-old; I’m not sure about express, since express trains are gone and mail gets shortened to FedEx.

If I had a child who was doing well with simple one-syllable words I might move ahead to this level.

If the child is *not* doing well with simple words, then that’s another question.

Joan and Victoria,

This is part of the Saxon Phonics program. Every few (5?)lessons they have an assessment which tests the children on sounds they have been learning. Part is simply matching a sound like /ar/ with a picture of an arm, for example, or reading a list of words with the sounds, reading a paragraph and answering comprehension questions (she can’t do this either), etc. The first section is always spelling (the words I listed were the only words for the last assessment). Those words contain sounds that they have been introduced to, so they are expected to be able to spell them. I do not recall any of them being in her regular weekly spelling tests, although there would have been words with similar spelling patterns. The other day they learned the /-tion/ ending. Do you know what one of the words was? Interruption!!! A four syllable word…we’re talking about 1st grade here!

Tomorrow morning (I don’t work on Fridays) I am going to her school to screen the lower first grade readers with the Reading Reflex tests. The teacher has already given me a list of 8 children out of 22 and says there are more that she would like checked. Now what does that tell you? I think the curriculum is a large part of the problem.

As far as the spelling goes, I have dropped making her practice them at home, because she has too much other homework and I think it’s a waste of time studying words above her level. They do practice them some in class. Some weeks she gets 10 out of 12 words right and some weeks maybe half. You just have to choose your battles and try to get the school to see the problem with the curriculum. I’m helping them choose a spelling curriculum for next year as they have no spelling program above 1st grade. If we can find a good one, I’d ask them to drop the Saxon spelling and use one that is really appropriate for first grade.

I value both your comments! Thanks!

Janis

Janis, I agree with your assessment re: curriculum. These are,however, private school where we send our children because we think they are better than public schools which for the most part they are. My son’s school used the Writing Road to Reading program in the first grade which is an OG based program. They learned a total of (I think) 72 “phonograms” which helped them learn to decode words. I spend several hours a week at the school reading with 1st graders (they read aloud to me) and I see most of them becoming quite proficient using these phonograms. My 3rd grader (the one with the recall problem) can decode multisyllable “nonsense words” used in testing at an extremely advanced level so he has no trouble picking up just about anything and going through the “mechanics” of reading it. If it’s “How to Build a Crystal Radio from Junk on the Floor of Your Closet”, he can tell you how to build it; however, if it’s a Biography of Benjamin Franklin, he’s at a loss as to how to begin the book report and gets 8 out 10 answers WRONG on the AR test. He says he’s reading it; it LOOKS like he’s reading it (eyes are moving across the page and pages are turning) but short of having him read out loud to us we really don’t know for sure and anyway we get into an argument if we ask him to do that. My experience with him,however, is that he has a much better recall for stories or anything really that goes in through his ears rather than his just his eyes * and he knows that too!* I believe this resistance to reading aloud is just a 9yr old power struggle and also that he thinks “only dumb bunnies have to read out loud”. Someone told me that he has an easier time recalling factual, technical material because it is easier to “label” that kind of stuff in our memory banks(files) than it is to come up with labels for “story stuff”. His original examiner (psych)told us to think of his brain as a file cabinet full of mostly unlabeled files. When he needs to recall stored information, he must shuffle through all (or almost) all the files to find what he’s looking for - a daunting task that he finds frustrating and often just cannot be bothered with because it takes him so much longer than his peers to come up with the information. The information is usually correct, however. To get back to my original idea - this is why I think V/V would be helpful if it in fact teaches the child to LABEL images and concepts for STORAGE thereby making RETRIEVAL or RECALL of the information easier. All I have read or been told about V/V focuses on comprehension and I’m not sure that this is really our basic problem here. The people who SELL this program say “oh yes this is what you need” but they are biased; they have a product to sell ( a very expensive product) and I just cannot afford to spend anymore money not to mention time on a program that is really not appropriate. Several educators told me that this type of recall problem is almost impossible to remediate and is best dealt with by accomodations so I am in somewhat of a quandry. His school is willing to accomodate him only up to a point. They use a literature based curriculum, even for the lower school, and a lot of the testing is in essay form rather simple ques/ans or mult choice ( this includes things like science and math) Thanks for any suggestions. Susan

IF it’s a bio, *before* he starts to read say “I’m going to ask you where this guy is from, two things that he is most famous for, and one trivia thing you don’t think most people know.” Or skim ahead in any given chapter and pick a few questions. If he knows what kinds of things to look for he may be able to organize the info and retrieve it.
Another suggestion (that helped me a *lot* as a kid, and I was one who could read from age 2) is to see if he can imagine that he is reading out loud to himself.

Sue’s advice about preparing him is good. I do that same preparation with some of my students within the context of their having done V/V work with me.

I also think the V/V program has value for this kind of issue. I do have some kids who visualize just fine but can’t express what they image. I also have kids who don’t seem to have any expressive problems, who can visualize just fine but can’t keep it all in their head. They may have sequencing issues, or short term memory issues. Once again, by using these structure words as a way for them to cement and organize their thoughts, they’re able to recall what they’ve read very well.

A person who’s really concrete will likely always have trouble with comprehension issues, especially when the passages being read aren’t factual. So the best thing we can do is give that person a system to follow. It’s inexact - it won’t solve the problem - but it’ll improve it. The V/V structure words provide a system. It’s really up to the practitioner to work hard on getting the child to abstract as much as possible by using these words as a guide.

V/V:

Sets an image in a person’s mind
Organizes that image by using the structure words
Sequences the images in the person’s mind, both from beginning of passage to
end and also from most important to least important.
Provides a methodology for describing the image

It begins with the very concrete and moves towards abstraction. The same 12 structure words can be used for both concrete and abstract thoughts. The practitioner really has to intuitively know how to guide the person’s descriptions past the concrete wherever possible.But again, it’s true that there are kids who aren’t going to “get” all the subtleties. There are also kids who won’t get it early on, but blossom later.

I happen to think that V/V has value in the regular classroom. We don’t teach comprehension enough. The LMB people complain that the various comprehension programs that exist where you read a passage and then answer questions about it is really the test part without the students ever have gotten the lessons in HOW to do this well. I agree. Many people are still following a very old-fashioned formula of teaching decoding and then assuming comprehension once the child can read the words. We need to teach the comprehension too in an organized fashion starting right when the students are in 1st. grade. In most of the classrooms I’ve had exposure to, it’s not done.

Susan,

Has your son been evaluated by a speech and language therapist for word retrieval issues? The way you describe his problems is very similar to the way word retrieval has been explained to me. My son has word retrieval issues. There are speech and language interventions that help.

Beth

Susan,

Wow, were you lucky to find a school that uses Spalding (WRTR) in the regular class! That is excellent! It sounds like you have gotten some good advice here…I think I’d try the V/V if I were you, if you can find someone to do it. I am definitely going to try it, too. We do have to be careful in our choices because kids can get very burned out…it already sounds like your son is building some resistance to reading aloud.

Janis