The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing (LiPS) Program has been used effectively for over 30 years in developing phonemic awareness as a foundation for word reading, spelling, and speech. A key difference in the LiPS Program is its focus on oral-kinesthetic feedback in phonemic awareness for students who have difficulty perceiving the individual sounds blended within words. For example the oral-kinesthetic features of the sound for the letter ‘P’ can be labeled Lip Popper (“Make the sound for the letter ‘P’ and tell me what you feel your mouth doing”).  Check out these tips and reminders to help you deliver dynamic instruction:

• Tip 1: Drive the Sensory Bus
  Use language to bring articulatory feedback to a conscious level. For example, the language, “When you say ‘flame’ what do you feel after the lip cooler?” develops oral-kinesthetic feedback, whereas the language, “What sound comes after the ‘F’?” does not. Review the Responding to the Response technique on page 5 in your LiPS manual. 

• Tip 2: Develop the Ability to Hold and Compare
  Students must be able to monitor their own learning process to determine if they are accurate in reading and spelling. Monitoring requires the ability to compare the response to the stimulus: the ability to hold and compare. When tracking sounds with mouth pictures or colored squares, remember to use a three-step process to help develop the ability to hold and compare: (1) student repeats both the old word (stimulus) and the new word (response), (2) student touches and says sounds for old word and new word, and (3) student makes the change and labels what she is doing. Reminder: See page 86 in your LiPS manual for a visual cue card. 

• Tip 3: Integrate LiPS with the Seeing Stars program
  Since reading fluency requires an integration of component parts, it is important to develop symbol imagery as a foundation for phonemic awareness, orthographic awareness, word recognition, spelling, and fluency. Don’t wait to complete all steps of the LiPS Program before starting Seeing Stars. You can overlap steps from the Seeing Stars program, such as letter imagery, airwriting, and high frequency Star Words practice. During your Consonant/Vowel review or while Tracking with Colored Squares, you can question for symbol imagery as well as for the articulatory label. For example: ‘T’—/t/—Tongue Tapper (Letter Image—Sound—Label).