A friend of mine recommended Edublox to me and we enrolled James during June 2015, because he needed assistance with his school work. That was our initial reason. James suffered a stroke at the age of 7.5 months and has since had a significant amount of therapy, mainly physiotherapy and occupational therapy. He is a right-sided hemiplegic. I felt that he needed something different after seven years as he was still struggling with his academics of which maths was the biggest struggle.
I took James for an initial assessment at Edublox and the results echoed my suspicions with regards to the challenges he faces. I was super excited to have found an organization that could assess my son in an hour and put their finger on the exact issues that we need assistance with!
I have suspected challenges with regards to logical thinking, visual perception and cognitive thinking. The assessment confirmed this and also pointed out the following in addition to my thoughts which are: auditory memory, visual memory and eye span. James’ handwriting is very poor, he would never leave spaces between his words and could not judge how much he could fit in before the end of the page and then would end up writing words vertically up the page.
The team at Edublox advised that James would be a unique case for them as he had an acquired brain injury but that they would try their best to assist him with his challenges. I enrolled James into the June/July holiday program and he attended five half days of intensive classes over a two week period.
Prior to James’ assessment, I had copied some of his worksheets with poor test results from the previous term, with the intention of working through them during the holidays. After the intensive holiday classes I re-did the worksheets with James. For the one maths assessment he scored 1/16 at school, and when he did it by himself afterwards he got 15/16! Another 2/7 improved to 7/7 and even the English assessment, for which he said “this is so hard for me” in response to my request that he does the worksheet, went well ― he even surprised himself! The teachers used to say that he daydreams a lot and that he doesn’t concentrate. Edublox has identified that it is not a concentration issue but rather a working memory issue. This made perfect sense to me. His working memory has improved amazingly well ― he can even recall 11 colours repeatedly without ever getting them mixed up!
After a full term at Edublox James’ subjects all improved by 10% and his homework doesn’t take as long anymore, and it is not as frustrating for him and us. His handwriting has also improved and he now always leaves spaces between his words.
James still mainly struggles with maths, especially mental maths which makes sense from a logical thinking, cognitive “wiring” and working memory point of view.
James has a long road to go still but I am more than pleased with the in roads we have made during the last six months. James hasn’t always wanted to go to Edublox as it is a big commitment for him to travel half an hour every week to get there and then he does a double session of three hours and he is only eight years old, but the team there has made him feel so loved and welcomed that it always makes up for it. Even though he doesn’t want to go sometimes he is always in such a buzzing mood when we collect him 🙂
Thank you to the Edublox team for assisting James on his road to recovery.
Kind regards
Sonja Webb
Sonja Webb James' mother
