lindamood-bell visualizing and verbalizing

Visualizing and Verbalizing is a lot easier to follow and do with a kiddo than LiPS; at our school it was done as *part* of the 50 minute period of daily language intervention, so it sure doesn’t have to be the intensive program.
What exactly are the comprehension issues? Maybe you’d do as well to work on vocabulary and main idea and inference type skills.

The vocabulary is well above ave. In reading comprehension, inference is the weakest, followed by constructing factual meaning and constructing evaluative meaning (IBTS). How can I boost these areas?

We’re doing LIPS and V & V this summer with a private tutor three times a week.
Can’t give you a report yet, obviously. The corporate office has this intensive approach to all the Lindamood programs. Besides the expense, I didn’t think my son would ever stand it. But until this year, I couldn’t find anyone privately either.
But if you can, that is what I would suggest.

Beth

Thanks. I will keep looking for someone outside of the corporate office (they really turned me off), in the meantime I have started using some workbooks (McGraw Hill has some nice ones) and a CD, Reading Adventures by the Learning Co. I will be trying a new CD that should arrive in a few days (can’t even think of its name) from a software company in NY that focuses on educational software. Even if it doesn’t help it can’t hurt.

Yes, sadly, you’re not the first person who’s been put off by the regional center or corporate office’s hard sell.

I teach V/V as a private tutor. I was trained by LMB. Most of the kids I work with see me for apprx. 2 hours a week throughout the schoolyear. In some cases it’s broken out into a half hour daily, whereas I see other kids for an hour twice a week. They all make good strides.

I’ve had students attend the regional center. Yes, they’ve radically improved in their skills. I certainly think it’s true that attending a regional LMB center and doing this program for xhours a day would give the greatest benefit but that’s true of virtually ANY reputable program you can name. You can still make great gains doing this in a less intensive environment, particularly if the child in question isn’t severely behind. In some cases, though, the very best thing, if you can afford it, is to make the commitment to a short-term (6 weeks) intensive therapy program. It’s certainly not always necessary and even more importantly, few people can afford it. So we do the best we can.

There are now lots of people like myself who are tutoring using the LMB methods. The LMB people won’t recommend us because, aside from being able to verify that we attended their training classes, they haven’t overseen our progress and therefore don’t know if we’re teaching it correctly. I can appreciate that.

But I think most of us are doing a fine job. By all means, look into finding someone who can work on a schedule more suited to you. Or bite the bullet, buy the book (that’s all you need) and learn to teach it yourself. The book is VERY readable and easy to understand. It’s also fun to teach.

Kay,

It’s funny to read your post, because I posted almost the same message about a month ago! I too couldn’t make the time/money commitment to go the official LMB route for my 10-yr old son. He has comprehension problems and I was looking into the LMB V&V program. We are lucky to have a LMB center in my city and I went to their open house last month. When I heard how much the testing cost and the time & $ for the program, I was very disappointed. Although I believe that intensive therapy works really well, it’s just hard to manage in the real world of school, camp, sports, and of course, budgets.

Let me tell you how I plan to approach this issue now. 1 — I bought the V&V materials (abt $100 on their web site) and I have gone through them carefully. 2 — I bought the book “How to Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence” (you can get it from Amazon), which is written by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness, who also created the Phonographix program. This book has lots of great exercises to increase comprehension. Unfortunately my son does not work well with me, so I have hired a tutor who works with LD children to work with him twice a week using the LMB and McGuinness materials I purchased. I don’t know if this will be an ideal situation, but it’s workable and acceptable to my son! Good luck.
Sally

where do you live??

I too have been interested in the lmb programs . How do they differ from phonographix?

Lisa in NJ

I’m Kay C. I, too would like to know the difference between phono-Gr. & LMB programs. I read so many recommendations about so many good programs, but don’t know exactly how each one works.

I know a kid who can sound-out words fine, but gets into trouble with comprehension. She did not do well in 5th G. at our school, but the parents want to put her in 6th anyway. I taught her in kindergarten using sequential sounding -out CVC words, but she got a lot of sight-reading in the other grades.

I’ve never worked with comprehension with older students, so I don’t know what program is good that is also affordable.

Comprehension, as you probably know is based on many things. I use both PG, which is strictly a decoding/spelling program and V/V with most of my students in high school and clients in private practice. There are no similarities between PG and V/V. Two different programs, two different results but used together are awesome! When I tutor a child, that you have discribed, I test using the PG tests first. The reason for this is that if a child has slow reading due to skipping words that she can’t decode, the result will be seen in poor comprehension. If this is the case, I use PG first. After PG is finished, I reevaluate. Usually if the child can comprehend auditorally, all she needs is to practice her decoding, through reading. She may need some vocabulary lessons due to a deficiency because her lack of reading skills. This is very hard to remediate if the student is older but you have to start somewhere. Another scenario is: If the child can decode and comprehend, I use V/V. To establish this, I just bring books on the child’s reading level and listen to her read. During the time that I am presenting V/V, I use stories. When I think that the student is visualizing, then I bring in the social studies book and work with her on content visualizing and depending on grade, teach her note taking and outlines for reading assignment. Lack of being able to visualize, can be the cause of ADD. If you can’t visualize, you have a very hard time learning. I have a very busy tutoring schedule and it includes a lot of time using both programs. I have one 10th grader that I will use about nine programs to remediate his deficiencies over the next two years. He has problems with decoding, visualizing both language and numbers, the process of writing, grammar and vocabulary. I will do intensives on PG , V/V, and Language Wise this summer and will pick him up as a regular client this fall, one hour a week. Hopefully, he will be able to pass his state tests and be ready to go to college in two years. I have been able to do this before. If you have any questions about the different programs, email me directly. Shay

Shay wrote:
>
> Lack of being able to visualize, can be the cause of ADD. If
> you can’t visualize, you have a very hard time learning.<

I’d like to add that, while this may be true, it’s more often just the opposite: ADD can be the cause of inability to visualize. The mind gets so bogged down in trivial details or other thoughts unrelated to the activity that visualizing the important elements gets lost. I find that I have far better results with kids when they’re on medication for their ADD than when they’re not. Because they can concentrate, they’re able to learn the visualization skills they couldn’t learn pre-medication.

But we should be certain that ADD is the culprit.

Another interesting cause of lack of visualization ability - and perhaps this is what you’re talking about but it technically isn’t ADD at all - are visual issues. I have a student with a very small color vision field. She probably has less than half the field of most people in all the colors. She could easily be described as ADD. Reading acquisition came with great difficulty although she has excellent auditory discrimination, no reversals, excellent sight word memory, etc. Comprehension initially came very slowly, and it appeared that the cause was ADD.

But when she began color vision therapy to widen her vision field, her reading and comprehension took off. This girl was virtually “in the dark” in many ways up to that point. Because she didn’t see at all on the periphery, she was “spacy” a lot. After a month of vision therapy, that spaciness had dramatically decreased and her reading fluency increased. She now needs to work on skills she missed all those years. But she’s learning them very fast. And what could’ve been called ADD is far less evident now.

The moral of this story, for me, is to be certain that struggling students see a developmental optometrist as part of the general evaluation.

Good morning! I’m enjoying the doves cooing and all is well with the world,except with you. I am a directed instruction teacher and a private consultant. There is a life after ” linda”. Not knowing how old your son is I can only give you another path that you might pursue. You might want to look into something a little less taxing, but strong in it’s approach. The approach you might want to pursue has approximately twenty years behind there method and has numerous successes. The approach has been used in the school that I work in . It’s been used for two years, and while still a pilot, it’s been very successful in our second grades (4) and all special education classes (1-8). We did a pre and post test(data is available if you would like some information).
Some schools in the area use Lindamood , but it is used in conjuction with speech and langauge and as an enhancement for verification for phonemic awareness.I have used some of the techniques; but for the most part,the phonemic awareness startegies in the Directed Instruction lesson have been adequate.
I hope this has helped you; please feel free to share with me anything that you may wish. Sincerely………….Joanna BargeBeth from FL wrote:
>
> We’re doing LIPS and V & V this summer with a private tutor
> three times a week.
> Can’t give you a report yet, obviously. The corporate office
> has this intensive approach to all the Lindamood programs.
> Besides the expense, I didn’t think my son would ever stand
> it. But until this year, I couldn’t find anyone privately
> either.
> But if you can, that is what I would suggest.
>
> Beth

Hi. I incorporate V&V into the PACE training I do. I ordered the book and taught it to myself. I use a faster, more urgent pace than the one described in the book. Even with the kids who had the most serious comprehension and visualizing issues I only did 20 mins of V&V 3 times a week for about 8 or 9 weeks. The kids all got really big gains. One 18 year old brought up his ACT scores by 7 points; an 8th grader brought her WJ reading comprehension scores up by several grade levels. I like the program a lot, and it can be done in a way that kids have fun with it rather than seeing it as drudgery. Good luck.

Ummm … OK, you say you have a program that’s really good and that you have pre and post test data, good … could you please let us in on the secret — what’s the *name* of this program, what is its availability and publisher etc., and what is the theoretical foundation? Thanks.

Joanna:

<>

Do you mean an SRA Direct Instruction teacher? It is an excellent group program for many students, even mildly LD students, but for the severely LD student, it really misses its mark. It’s too fast-paced, and lacks the blending and segmenting of phonemes and syllables that multisensory reading/spelling programs provide (LMB, Wilson, O-G). I think the SRA Corrective Reading: Decoding Strategies series is a good pre-intervention strategy for students with poor word attack skills before placing a him/her into Special Education. My school is a Direct Instruction school, and I have nothing but the best compliments for the Corrective Reading series.

Marilyn

Sally-
Did your tutor have any prior experience with the Lindamood-Bell programs? Can you update me on how things are going so far?

beth- how did you make out with the program so far? I am still searching for a private tutor. How did you find your person?

connie - did you buy the vv book and use that? I haven’t seen any materials for vv yet. 20 min 3 x per week is excellent! I know little about these programs and hesitate trying to teach it myself. Maybe it is a good solution. Do you think I could use the book without any of the training classes?