Sam* was 11 years old when he started intervention at Edublox Online Tutor on January 20, 2025. He had been diagnosed with dyscalculia and struggled with several foundational math concepts and procedures, including place value, multiplication, and long division.
What is dyscalculia?
Dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty that affects the understanding and processing of numbers and mathematical concepts. Children with dyscalculia often struggle with number sense, place value, memorizing math facts, mental math, sequencing, procedural calculations, and understanding mathematical relationships. Many students with dyscalculia work exceptionally hard yet still find mathematics confusing and overwhelming.
Initial difficulties
At the start of the program, Sam could count fluently from 70 to 100 and backward from 100 to 70, and he appeared to know multiplication tables up to 5. However, he struggled to apply this knowledge procedurally. He could not multiply two 2-digit numbers, could not perform long division tasks, and demonstrated a weak understanding of place value.
One striking example was that Sam wrote the number 73,052 as 7342, indicating that he did not yet fully understand place value, zeros, and the relationship between number positions.
Intervention
Sam completed approximately 150 thirty-minute online math lessons through Edublox Online Tutor by May 12, 2026, together with 15 hours of cognitive training. The intervention focused on structured, cumulative instruction combined with frequent review and procedural understanding.
Progress achieved
• Sam mastered fluent counting in 2s through 15s and learned to apply this knowledge to multiplication and division.
• He mastered counting in 20s and 25s and counted confidently up to 37,000 in these sequences.
• He became successful in mentally adding and subtracting 1 through 5 from numbers between 10 and 100.
• He learned subtraction with regrouping across zeros.
• He learned multiplication involving numbers up to 3 digits by 3 digits.
• He learned to perform long division with understanding.
• He learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and mixed numbers.
• He learned to simplify fractions, find factors, and convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers accurately.
• He developed a solid understanding of decimal concepts, including operations with decimals and place value.
• He began percentages and made steady progress converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages, as well as solving percentage increase and decrease problems.
• He can now read, write, and interpret numbers into the hundreds of millions.
Conclusion
Sam’s case illustrates how a child with dyscalculia can make substantial progress through systematic intervention, cumulative review, cognitive training, and carefully sequenced mathematical instruction. Although he still has concepts to master before progressing to algebra and geometry, the improvement in his confidence, procedural understanding, and mathematical fluency has been remarkable.
Edublox offers cognitive training and live online tutoring to students with dyscalculia and other learning challenges. We support families in the United States, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Book a free consultation to discuss your child’s learning needs and learn more below:
* Sam is a pseudonym.
