The Empower Reading Program

Empower Reading Program was created in 1979 by Dr. Maureen Lovett, a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the clinical and educational unit at SickKids in Toronto. The program was designed to help individuals that are experiencing difficulty developing reading skills that is easily accessible online with an account. Empower Reading is a multi-component intervention program for struggling readers. It has five distinct reading intervention modules that address decoding, spelling, reading comprehension and vocabulary skills for different ages. The program is primarily used with children and adolescence. 

Program Highlights

• 'Self Talk' Dialogue
• Variety of activities to practice new skills and strategies
• Flexible teaching approaches and methodologies
• Individually Paced

The Learning Disabilities Research Program (LDRP) was the first research laboratory program to use randomized controlled trials in order to understand the effectiveness of different reading interventions for children and adolescents with disabilities. The research included over 6500 participating over three decades. The results of the LDRP research determined the importance of incorporating decoding strategy instruction, motivational retaining, and promotion of flexible approach to word identification and text into a reading program. Dr. Maureen Lovett and the LDRP expert's research was used to develop Empower Reading. Students are able to achieve better literacy and improve reading comprehension with EmpowerReading. This program benefits all struggling readers, regardless of their socioeconomic status, language background, and intellectual functioning.

Empower Reading can be extremely effective, especially for children and adolescents with diagnosed learning disabilities and individuals that are at risk for developing language learning difficulties. Empower Reading program has resulted in improved reading outcomes for children with significant difficulties in reading.

Overview of the Empower Reading Program: Students become self-sufficient in their use of reading strategies by learning five sequential strategies for word identification and decoding. See the lesson plan at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedl... and do a virtual tour of this teacher’s classroom at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedl.... Also go to http://www.LitDiet.org for more free teaching activities and virtual classroom tours.

References 

Dr. John H.F Chan. (2021) Overcoming Reading Deficits. EdCan Network. Accessed November 14, 2021.Retrieved from: https://www.edcan.ca/articles/overcoming-reading-deficits/

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2021) Empower Reading Program and the Provincial Schools' Research Partnership. Accessed November 14, 2021. Retrieved from: https://pdsbnet.ca/en/schools/trillium/programs-and-services/empower-reading-program-and-the-provincial-schools-research-partnership/

The Hospital for Sick Children. (2021) Empower™ Reading and Learning Group. Accessed November 14, 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.sickkids.ca/en/learning/empower-reading/

-Madeleine @NU-OTECC