Cognitive abilities are the brain-based skills we need to carry out any task from the simplest to the most complex. They have more to do with the mechanisms of how we learn, remember, problem-solve, and pay attention rather than with any actual knowledge.
Any task can be broken down into the different cognitive skills or functions needed to complete that task successfully. For instance, answering the telephone involves at least: perception (hearing the ring tone), decision taking (answering or not), motor skill (lifting the receiver), language skills (talking and understanding language) and social skills (interpreting tone of voice and interacting properly with another human being).
Edublox develops the cognitive abilities that make reading, spelling and learning possible and easy. Skills of importance include
- Attention and concentration;
- Perception — visual, auditory and haptic;
- The ability to discriminate, synthesise and analyse in terms of foreground-background, form, size, position in space and colour;
- Processing speed;
- Phonemic awareness;
- Memory — short and long term, visual and auditory;
- The ability to decode, integrate and classify information.
Significant improvement
“I first heard about Edublox last year when Keamo was starting school,” says Ntabiseng, Keamo’s mother. “She had difficulties discriminating between b’s and d’s and she would reverse numbers.
“With the Edublox programme she began practising directions using arrows, patterns, and sequences. Within a month, her difficulties were history.
“Edublox has made a significant improvement towards the reading skill development of my daughter.”
Significant indeed! On 9 June 2012 Keamo was assessed on the Essi Reading and Spelling Test. The reading test aims at determining the sight word vocabulary of a learner. Norms for the tests, available for each term, have been calculated in the form of stanines and percentile ranks.
Of children doing the test,
4% score a stanine of 1 (VERY POOR)
19% score a stanine of 2 or 3 (POOR)
54% score a stanine of 4, 5 or 6 (AVERAGE)
19% score a stanine of 7 or 8 (GOOD)
4% score a stanine of 9 (VERY GOOD)
Assessed on a Grade 2, 2nd term level, Keamo scored a stanine of 7 (GOOD) for reading and spelling! In addition, his oral reading speed was already 92 words per minute! (A Grade 2 learner should be reading approximately 80-90 words per minute by the end of Grade 2.)
“She also excels in mathematics and spelling, Ntabiseng continues. “She is amongst the top achieving learners in her class, and her report card is positive.”
The proof of the pudding is in the eating
Below is Keamo’s mid-year Grade 2 report.
1 = Excellent 2 = Very good 3 = Average/Satisfactory 4 = Partially achieved 5 = Not yet competent
