Lindamod Bell sets the climate with young students (though actually conceived in the early seventies for illiterate adults) preparing to learn about phonemic awareness and matching sounds to symbols and later to letters. she starts with a mind map of how the senses take in information and how the brain processes each type of information in specialized areas, then integrates it with information for other areas, and prepares her lessons in that way so that each child (type of learner) see themselves as having some kind of control over the learning process. Then instead of regarding learning as a mysterious "something" that simply happens or does not happen , they can consciously assist themselves in the process ( I am copying straight from the book) It established the dance that students and teachers do to interact in specific ways, establishes the roles, and who is accountable for what. She goes into very specific roles of executive function and how kids can access this by talking to themselves, directing themselves and labeling what they have noticed. The lesson spans pp 27-31 in her LIPS program, a phoneme program for reading, spelling, and speech she does similar mind maps or conventions to show kids how to notice: size, shape,perspective, color, foreground, background, sound, movement and the like. She does the same thing for teachers in chapter 1 defining the reading process and noting the underlying sensory-cognitive functions, integrating the visual, auditory and oral-motor feedback and citing roadblocks and how they can be prevented. I found her methods intriguing and when I worked in a progressive private school with emphasis on class population being differentiated from severly handicapped to giftedI I relied heavily on her program... very sensory based... complicated phonics rules were presented easily in terms of "short little trigger stories (quick way to access a sound ... ) and lots of tactile cues. I still use her ideas a great deal in my first grade classroom. My discussions with David Middlebrook on textmapping always bring me back to Lindamood Bell ... her family (a group of sisters committed to challenged learners) were way ahead of the time... in those days my district was using a program from England where working with words for kids was actually teaching them invented spelling in spelling list form and then trying to undo the learning in the next grade level.... quite disasterous......Lindamood spared me and mine. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
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