My son, Daniel, has been doing Audiblox since May, 2003. We are on Week 22 right now and are seeing some exciting signs of his progress. As background information I should say that we noticed when Daniel was young that he had a problem memorizing. Also as his teacher, I noticed that he had a hard time getting information into his long term memory. His reading was okay, spelling was very poor and he was having great difficulty memorizing his math facts. Last year in fifth grade, I read most of Daniel’s school work out loud to him as I didn’t think his reading was good enough to allow him to comprehend his assigned reading. Dan also had a very hard time telling his left and right and reversed his b’s and d’s.
When we started Daniel had memorized SEVEN blocks at the end of the first week. Yes, seven. In our last report, Dan had memorized FIFTY blocks. I have seen definite improvement in several areas. In the beginning of October, Benetta (our Audiblox program advisor) added the spelling component to Daniel’s weekly program. I had tested Dan’s spelling at the beginning of the school year and he scored at the beginning of third grade. I retested him last week and he scored at the end of third grade/beginning of fourth grade. That is a huge leap for such a short time. Lately, Daniel has been spontaneously spelling words and asking for confirmation that his spelling is correct. This is quite a big step for Dan because not only was his visual memory poor but his auditory memory was too. He could not retain the correct spelling of a word only seconds after hearing it. Now he happily asks for confirmation of his spelling. One day as I threw down words for him to spell and covered them up, he exclaimed, “It’s like I can see through your hand, Mom!” At last he could visualize and remember the words he had seen. When he was a little boy, he belonged to AWANA, a Bible club that involves a lot of memorization. Dan dropped out when he was eight because he was so discouraged that he couldn’t memorize as many verses as other kids. Recently, we did a study and he was asked to read a verse. His sister teasingly said, “You had to memorize that verse for AWANA, Dan.” He read the verse and said, “I can’t believe I ever thought that was hard.” Dan now knows right and left with no difficulty. He now rarely reverses his b’s and d’s.
I know that we have a long way to go. I plan to do Audiblox for at least a year if necessary. But the progress that Dan has made so far makes me certain that we are on the right track.
In closing, I found a new book on learning disabilities at our library. The author mentioned the most common aspects of learning disabilities/dyslexia including short term memory difficulties, auditory and visual processing disorders. As I read the book, I realized that Audiblox addressed almost every one of these! Plus I found this bit of information on a website: “An average student usually only has to decode and see the word about 40 times before it becomes an instant sight word; however, dyslexics have to decode/see the word 275-300+ times before it becomes an instant sight word!!” I realized that this was exactly what the reading exercise in Audiblox does. Reading this made me certain that this is the right program for my boy right now. I am so grateful to have found this program.
Connie
USA