Local Press

 

Lindamood-Bell has Bessemer reading scores soaring
By Peter Strescino

January 28, 1999


Lindamood-Bell has teachers and students in a good mood at Bessemer Elementary School. The reading program that uses lip poppers and tongue tappers to teach kids to read has helped a select group of struggling readers improve their skills dramatically, the District 60 school board was told this week.

After a couple of months of working with the program, 15 Bessemer third, fourth and fifth graders – kids who were substantially behind in their reading – as much as tripled their comprehension and accuracy, said Paul Worthington, director of research and development for Lindamood-Bell.

"We’re very impressed with the students’ progress," Worthington told the board. "We keep close tabs on the amount of instruction, and we gave them about 45 hours geared toward different literary development."

Bessemer’s own testing mirrored Lindamood-Bell’s results, Principal Gary Trujillo said.

"There’s a high correlation with our own assessments," he said. "This reinforces that we’re moving in the right direction."

As a group, Worthington said the students were in the 14th percentile when it came to the ability to read a new work (word attack). Their word-attack skills improved to the 42nd percentile after three months of Lindamood-Bell.

Before the course, the group tested in the 18th percentile in word recognition. After Lindamood-Bell, they scored in the 32nd percentile.

On a grade level, the selected 15 student’s rate of reading increased to the full third-grade level, from the pre-Lindamood-Bell 2.5 level. In reading accuracy, the group improved to fifth-grade level, fifth month. That was up from third grade, third month. In comprehension, the group as a whole went from late second grade all the way to the fourth-grade, second-month level.

"They now have the basic skills to meet the demands upon them," Worthington said of the students. "We are half-way through the race for Bessemer."

Superintendent Henry Roman said that by speaking with teachers he was expecting improvement but was surprised by the magnitude of the advancements.

"Also, this came from working with kids who were having difficulty reading. To move forward in so short a time was impressive," he said.

Lindamood-Bell was developed about 30 years ago, by Patricia and Phyllis Lindamood and Nanci Bell. They have set up clinics throughout the country, but their presence in Bessemer is a unique situation. There was a full-time consultant at the school for most of the first semester.

Lindamood-Bell does not focus on a single area, but goes back to the roots of all learning and processing, according to its proponents.

This includes work in listening, seeing and language.

Listening skills are used to develop phonemic awareness, a skill that basically helps a student decode words that they don’t know.

Seeing concerns word imaging, that leads to increased reading rate and fluency, reading in phrases and chunks rather that decoding every single word to phonetic elements, causing the reader to end up losing comprehension.

The last element is language itself, context and expressive written and oral language. The language program is called visualizing and verbalizing that also is encompassed in comprehension skills.

Lindamood-Bell teachers worked with kids in small groups for an hour a day in the afternoons and included Lindamood-Bell in other classrooms for a half hour each day.

Lindamood-Bell is being paid $58,000 by School District 60 and several thousand by Bessemer in money it has been awarded for student-achievement improvements.

Worthington said that he has spoken to a couple of middle-school principals about bringing a form of the program to their schools.

Trujillo said the Lindamood-Bell program has entered its second stage at Bessemer. Staff development in the program has been successful and it now can be spread throughout the district, and Roman later agreed.

"I believe this is a program that can continue to be of assistance at Bessemer and other elementaries," Roman said. "And at middle schools as well."

Worthington said some middle schoolers can get in deep trouble.

"It’s not unheard of for a student in junior high to be seven, eight years behind in reading," he said.