Karla, a homeschooling mom in Canada, shares her son’s reading struggles. After being diagnosed as learning disabled, he attended a literacy school. He made some progress but continued to guess every second or third word. She relates how Edublox was the game-changer.
Diagnosed as learning disabled
I have a ten-year-old son who has needed remedial help in the public school system since he was in first grade. During his fourth and the beginning of his fifth year of school, he was sent to a literacy school where he could get more one-on-one help with reading. He only made enough progress there that about a fourth of the way into the fifth-grade school year, he was able to read at a third-grade reading level. Everyone has been baffled by his inability to read well, as his I.Q. scores have been extremely high.
After tons of testing and school reports, they decided that he is learning disabled though I was never told exactly what is causing his “inability” either. So for the remainder of fifth grade, I pulled him out of the public school, and I started homeschooling him. This was a very scary thing for me to do as I didn’t know what I was going to do to improve his reading ability either.
Introduced to Edublox
Through research for curriculum, I was introduced to Edublox. I read through almost all of the posts on the message boards and all of the articles on the website as well.
I had an older child who had gone through a program in the U.S. that is similar to Edublox, where I saw some results. I was excited to find something that I could do at home and which didn’t cost me two thousand dollars (the cost of the other program), plus I am learning how to use the program with my child, so it can be a continual process, not one that is dictated by when my money will run out (like the other program).
Self-esteem and reading fluency improved
My ten-year-old has only been using the Edublox program for three months, and these are the things that I have noted in him. Most importantly, I would have to say that his self-esteem has improved immensely. He is acting more mature and more responsible for his own behavior.
As far as his reading is concerned, he is still reading at a third-grade level. This is the good news, though: Even at the third-grade level, he would guess every second or third word. You could tell him to look at it closely, sound it out, etc., and he would just keep on guessing. Sometimes the word wouldn’t even look like the words he was guessing.
Now he only guesses about every fifth word, and if I tell him he has read the word wrong, he’ll look at it again and most times be able to tell me what the word is (he still has a difficult time sounding out multisyllabic words).
His fluency has increased tremendously too. For the first time, he is reading without long pauses between words or sounding like a robot. He is actually starting to put some inflection into his words.
Quick progress in a short time
I am excited to see what the future holds for my son. I am finally seeing quick progress in such a short time that I can’t wait to see what the next few months will bring him by using Edublox.
I also want to state that I think one of the reasons that my son has had progress this quickly is because we started out doing five sessions a day for two weeks, then two sessions a day for two weeks, and now we do one session a day, five days a week. It really takes commitment on the parents’ part, but you really see results.
I would like to thank all of the support and answers to the questions that I have been given. The administrators of Edublox have been very willing to give me advice or explain how to do some of the exercises if something was unclear.
I highly recommend Edublox to anyone that is having problems reading. This is coming from someone who has tons of “how-to read books” that were a big waste of money, and I can tell you that Edublox is not.
Karla,
Homeschool mom,
Canada
Edublox offers live online tutoring to students with dyslexia and other learning challenges. Our students are in the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Book a free consultation to discuss your child’s learning needs.
