Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) Votes to Re-Endorse Seeing Stars® and Visualizing and Verbalizing® Programs

The Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) has officially re-endorsed Gander Publishing's Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking® and Seeing Stars® programs. CASE is an international professional education organization affiliated with the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), whose members are dedicated to the enhancement of the worth, dignity, and uniqueness of each individual in society.

The endorsements came after thorough review by members of the CASE Publications and Product Review Committee—a group of leaders in special education who review and endorse a variety of research-based products designed to improve student outcomes. Both Visualizing and Verbalizing and Seeing Stars met all of the components for the CASE re-endorsement process and, therefore, carry an official CASE Endorsement for three years.

"The Publications and Products Review committee of CASE was impressed with how the programs showed evidence that they were beneficial for struggling students and those with Specific Learning Disabilities," said Dr. Pamela Howard, co-chair of the CASE re-endorsement committee.

The Visualizing and Verbalizing (V/V®) program develops concept imagery—the ability to create an imagined gestalt from language—as a basis for comprehension and higher order thinking. Howard said, "The committee appreciated the number of repeat customers, which implied a large amount of customer satisfaction with the product and company." She also stated that the committee was impressed with the research on V/V that indicates the program, "when implemented with fidelity, stimulates concept imagery and applies that imagery to understanding written and oral language."

After evaluating Seeing Stars, Howard commented on how pleased the committee was with recent revisions to the product. "The revised version included expanded lessons and resources for teachers that included more sample lessons, illustrations, and recommendations for small-group instruction." The Seeing Stars program develops symbol imagery as a basis for orthographic awareness, phonemic awareness, word attack, word recognition, spelling, and contextual reading fluency.

Two recent groundbreaking studies showed favorable results for students who received V/V and Seeing Stars instruction. In a study at the University of Alabama, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) received ten weeks of V/V intensive reading intervention. Brain imaging techniques showed the intervention was enough to strengthen the activity of loosely-connected areas of their brains that work together to comprehend reading.

In a separate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), students with reading disabilities or difficulties (ages 6-9) were randomly assigned to receive intensive Seeing Stars instruction as an intervention during the nonacademic summer. Analysis of pre- and posttesting revealed positive results in reading skills for students who received the intervention.