Surprised at Lindamood Bell summer clinicians

LAURARICE26:

LMB does 4 hours a day to build in immediate review and reinforcement which aids in quicker and more solid mastery of the information. The same concept is taught/reviewed each of the four hours in one day. Mastery of a concept is extremely important before moving on to another concept. The four hours a day is usually done in the "summer intensive" program.

Since there are 44/45 phonemes (with over 100 ways to spell them) plus 5 syllable division patterns (LMB's 'breaking rules") to learn, students cannot get through all of the concepts they need for reading in one summer intensive--this depends, of course, on what sound/letter relationships they already have mastered before entering the program. There were a number of students who came back for additional instruction in new concepts when I was there.

Students would only need "outside" tutoring to learn concepts they did not learn at LMB. Once concepts are mastered at LMB, those particular concepts are usually secure without additional outside tutoring.

Since LMB is a systematic and sequential program, it is hard to put grade level gains on this type of instruction. For instance, if the student had not learned the diphthongs yet (i.e. oo, ou. ow, au, aw, oi, oy) there would be many words that they may not be able to decode and read yet.

My son is beginning to understand place value but not from Kumon (he is going into 3rd grade). Ditto with word problems. For me, Kumon has its place in terms of providing a lot of repetition for things that need to be automatic, it is not a one stop kind of solution.
I have found Kumon to be a positive experience for my son because he can see progress there and can master things that he would have a tough time with otherwise, because the school curriculum jumps around too much. But it is definitely not all he needs. You have to know what you are trying to achieve with Kumon. It has helped DS gain confidence with reading and increase vocab, but it would never make a dent in his overall reading comprehension. That is why we are doing V/V.
Common wisdom usually dictates using manipulatives with kids with LD, but my son hates them with a passion.

I worked with a student this summer who had some Kumon training. He was good at many basic calculations but did not understand the underlying concepts. We had to take him back and give instruction in the "meaning" of the math operations. He kept asking just "how do I do it?" He really did not understand place value, regrouping, even the meaning of subtraction for word problems. He benefited from doing lots of work with manipulatives to shore up the foundations. Has anyone else had this experience?

I cannot speak for LMB or O/G in this case, but I know my son appeared to regress in math calculation when he began Kumon, because he started at a very simple level, but in reality he was mastering what he had not mastered before, instead of just gearing up to perform well on a test and then forgetting it all. Now he is really solid in math calculation, and I don't think he would ever be from the math curriculum at school.