Visualizing and Verbalizing goals/objectives

Oct 29, 2017 by

Visualizing and Verbalizing goals/objectives

Several years ago I took the Visualizing and Verbalizing course. It must have been a 3 or 4-day course. I didn’t take it directly from Lindamood Bell but from a local agency that was approved by Lindamood-Bell and used Visualizing and Verbalizing in their practice. I was honestly very impressed with V and V. My initial impression was that it tapped into a lot of what I was trying to do with many of my students. Basically it presented me with a better-organized and sequential program that fit my needs at the time. At the completion of the course I wrote a reflection paper, which I feel is still relevant today.

Now ironically, the V and V kit along with LIPS (then known as ADD) kit sat on my inherited shelves for years untouched. I seem to remember seeing them collecting dust in various reading specialists offices too. I’m really sorry I didn’t jump on this bandwagon sooner. I also regret not taking the longer LIPS course when I was younger and becoming an expert in it.

I think most of the people taking the course with me were just as excited and anxious to use V and V in their practice. The big question came up. How do we write goals for this? All the controversy around goal writing was just starting to heat up and we needed something substantial. As a group we talked about wording and I’m still searching for those notes. What I did find was the handout given to us by the instructor after our group discussion. Keep in mind that the instructor worked in a clinical setting and that these were generated long before schools started requiring some tie in to curriculum. Also in schools we are not suppose to write goals around a specific program. While V and V isn’t mentioned the first one refers to structure words and the second one mentions felts.

  1. Student will verbalize the main idea and details of a given picture, word or sentence using 10/12 of the structured words independently and spontaneously.
  2. Student will read a paragraph, verbalize his images after each sentence or chunk of sentences (2-3 sentences), and give a picture summary with 80% accuracy (4/5 felts)
  3. Student will state the main idea of a fiction or non-fiction paragraph 8/10 times.
  4. Student will read a single or multiparagraph selection, verbalize a retell which includes the main idea of a paragraph and his images after each paragraph and dictate a summary of the selections 8/10 times

After rereading these, it’s clear that these are more less an objective for each stage of the program.

Several years later, I still like V and V and use pieces of it. Visualizing as a skill is being taught more frequently in classrooms than it was even 10 years ago. Schools now have reading specialists that hopefully incorporate some visualizing skill development. I tend to use the program to help expand language, increase vocabulary, help to recognize details/background information and improve semantic/pragmatic understanding. I have specific photos on my IPad that I collected over the years and often use the structured words in conjunction. I sometimes take it down to an even lower level using just one or two of the structure words as appropriate.

However, the real question for me is why don’t these very expensive programs come with goal suggestions that can be used in schools? Why don’t we leave conferences with specific goal language in hand? So often we leave conferences with a lot of background information (sometimes a lot of review) and very little in terms of specifics around implementation. I feel the same way about formal tests; there is so little discussion on test interpretation and what to do about it. I get that we are suppose to use our clinical judgment but a little guidance and a few more examples would be nice. I guess that’s a discussion for another day.

Hey if you haven’t tried V and V it’s worth taking the course.  As an SLP I’ve never had a chance to use the full kit.  However, I would love to be involved with a school or clinic that uses the program on a regular basis.



 

 

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1 Comment

  1. Lisa

    IEP Goals – I see that you were looking for IEP goals tied loosely from Visualizing and Verbalizing. I am in the process of writing a new IEP with a reading comprehension goal and struggling. The Student is in grade 4 and struggles with inferential thinking. The student also has an ASD diagnosis. She currently works with our school’s SLP in this program (V & V) and I try to carry over as her reading specialist in my space. Any help with wording for an IEP goal would be appreciated.

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