With over 35 years of success, Lindamood Bell instruction has been helping children and adults read and comprehend. This is one of many teaching programs for those struggling to read and reach their potential. The program is consistent with a similar program to the Orton-Gillingham approach.
This program has a great structure that is known to influence the Lindamood Bell approach. Like the others, the approach uses various senses to help the students to make linkages between words and sounds. However, the approach is unique in its ways.
Find out more in the sections below!
The Main Area of Focus
Lindamood Bell breaks down reading and comprehension into functional skills. These skills include the connection of letters into sounds and the process of blending sounds into words.
With this approach, the students are given the breathing space between mastering one skill and learning the next.
Other than teaching, the students also read some words. The program’s main aim is to understand the content. To make this possible, the program makes use of the imagery approach.
For instance, at some point, the students might be asked to create mental images of what they are reading.
For instance, if students read about a lion or anything else, they’ll receive encouragement to describe what they see. The students can be asked to picture the lion playing with her cubs or any other animal.
This approach helps the students easily find and remember the meaning of what they are reading about.
Lindamood Bell emphasizes the process of connecting sounds, images, and, finally, symbols.
Where to find Lindamood Bell?
The truth of the matter is that this approach to learning is rare in schools. Generally, if you need to find Lindamood Bell, you must go to designated centers. However, you need to know that this form of learning is very costly.
So, as you plan to enrol your kid in this learning mode, you must prepare to pay. The good thing is that this learning mode is very effective, although costly. For this reason, it is worth paying for.
The other good thing is that the company also partners with some districts. These partnerships ensure workshops for the available teachers and direct instruction to the students.
These programs are also recommended for special education students as part of the response to intervention.
Who are The Ideal Targets?
There have been questions in the past about who the ideal people or targets of Lindamood Bell Well, this approach targets so many people, like those kids with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and finally, auditory processing disorders.
How Does it Work?
You must be wondering how exactly Lindamood Bell works. Well, this approach works in steps we will see below.
So, the first step is the evaluation process by the Lindamood bell instructor. Usually, the instructor will use systemized tests to assess the student’s strengths and weaknesses. These areas include reading, comprehension, and mathematics.
You need to note that this is not akin to evaluation for special education services. After going through this process, the instructor develops a learning plan. The plan will entail the number of hours the student needs to reach the learning goals.
The plan also outlines the specific instructions the student will need during this course. Under normal circumstances, the students will work on one with the instructors.
The students must attend daily sessions lasting between one and four hours. In most cases, the student works in groups while on the school program, which lasts 30 minutes to 2 hours.
During the learning process, the instructors monitor the student’s learning and provide updates to their parents and other people.
These updates are critical as they help the parents understand their kids’ learning issues. This indeed helps in finding the correct learning instructions for the kids.
For instance, the updates will teach you how the kids are faring. If the students need help with reading, you will also know that and assist them where appropriate.
The main aim here is to help the students understand what they are reading well. If your child still requires evaluation for special education services, you must consider this approach, too.
This is one way to get your child the reading support they need in school. As you would suspect, this approach has been proven to work well and, ideally, in many places.
Programs offered
LMB currently offers five programs. Of these five programs, four are for reading, and only one is for math. We will look at some of these programs individually to help you understand them.
Seeing stars
This program aims to teach vowels. After this, the student progresses to the syllabus, prefixes, and suffixes. Using these skills, the students can master 500 to 1000 common sight words.
Visualization and verbalization for language comprehension and thinking
Some students are capable of reading some texts but fail to understand their meanings. This program educates students to use imagery to improve their cognition and critical thinking. The process begins with word imagery and then moves on to paragraph imagery.
Visualizing and verbalizing for expression and oral language comprehension
This is one exercise that is so essential. The exercise works by linking images to words with the view of building vocabulary.
Lindamood phoneme sequencing program for spelling speech and reading.
The program also trains in phonemic awareness. In this case, the oral-motor movements that produce sounds are taught explicitly. For instance, some students struggle to feel the physical characteristics of their lips.
On cloud nine, math
This program trains the students in foundational subtraction, addition, and multiplication of figures up to 100. However, this mathematics division usually is not included.
Just like the other programs, this one also extensively uses imagery.
Conclusion
Lindamood Bell is one of the best learning modes you can offer your kids. Several advantages of this approach include better comprehension by your child.
That must be a great feeling, to see your child who cannot read, forming clear connections between words and imagery.
Even though it is expensive, it is one of the best educational approaches for children and adults. Specifically, it has great benefits for those with auditory process disorders, even dyscalculia.
Share this article with someone you know who could benefit!
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