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Special Education & Learning Disabilities Resources: A Nationwide Directory
Real Solutions for Students Who Struggle With Comprehension or Reading
Difficulty with Reading ComprehensionIt's commonly believed that to comprehend what they read, students must have strong decoding skills and adequate oral vocabulary. Unfortunately, many students who can decode well and understand words still have weak comprehension. What is the missing piece for these students?
They may have a learning weakness that prevents them from comprehending the language they read and hear. They might get parts or some details but may have difficulty remembering a book or story as a whole. Understanding directions from parents and teachers may appear to go in one ear and out the other without a connection.
What's the Cause?
Problems with reading comprehension may be due to weak concept imagery, the ability to create an imaged whole from oral and written language. This weakness causes individuals to get only "parts" of information they read or hear and can often undermine the reading and thinking process. The Visualizing and Verbalizing ® program, authored by Lindamood-Bell co-founder Nanci Bell, develops concept imagery as a basis for comprehension and higher order thinking. The development of concept imagery improves reading and listening comprehension, memory, oral vocabulary, critical thinking, and writing.
Challenged By Reading
When a student struggles with reading or is diagnosed with dyslexia, extra help often focuses on phonics and spelling rules. However, many students who have had years of extra help continue to struggle.
They may sound out a word, but it is slow and labored. Frequently, they take so long to sound out the word, they miss the meaning of the text altogether. Or, they may substitute words when reading a paragraph and have difficulty with reading fluency. These students may spell words phonetically but are unable to remember the visual patterns of words (orthography).
What is the missing connection for these students?
An important aspect of reading and spelling is symbol imagery, which underlies both phonological and orthographic processing. Symbol imagery—the ability to visualize the sounds and letters in words—is necessary for sounding out new words and quickly recognizing letters and common words. Students who read fluently, and are able to self-correct their errors, have strong symbol imagery.
The Seeing Stars® program, also authored by Lindamood-Bell co-founder Nanci Bell, develops symbol imagery as a basis for orthographic awareness, phonemic awareness, word attack, word recognition, spelling, and contextual reading fluency.
Research-Validated
The Seeing Stars and Visualizing and Verbalizing programs are research-validated. For information about peer-reviewed research studies involving Lindamood-Bell, including recent ground-breaking research involving Seeing Stars instruction and students with dyslexia from the University of Washington, go to www.lindamoodbell.com/research.
Summer Programs
Lindamood-Bell offers summer programs for reading or comprehension that can make the difference of a lifetime. For information about instruction at our seasonal locations please call (800) 300-1818.
.Disclaimer: Internet Special Education Resources (ISER) provides this information in an effort to help parents find local special education professionals and resources. ISER does not recommend or endorse any particular special education referral source, special educational methodological bias, type of special education professional, or specific special education professional.