For educators
What Is Empower™ Reading?
- Empower™ Reading is designed to teach struggling readers a set of effective word identification skills and decoding strategies
- Use of the strategies allows students to experience success in reading and gain confidence in their own reading skills
- The program empowers students with the basic skills needed to read independently for meaning, information, or pleasure
Who is Empower™ Reading designed for?
The Empower™ Reading Program is recommended for children who:
- are in grades 2 to 5
- are having significant difficulty acquiring age-appropriate reading skills
- speak English as a first language or are English language learners
- have low average to above average cognitive ability
Implementation of Empower™ Reading
- The Empower™ Reading Program offers children 110 hours of instruction
- It is recommended that teachers instruct children in groups of 4 to 8 and that Empower™ Reading be taught to each group 1 hour per day, 5 days per week.
- It is important that teachers make every effort to ensure that his/her Empower™ Reading group completes the 110 hour program within one school year.
- Teachers who are instructing Empower need a dedicated space to instruct their group(s) as there are a number of support materials that need to be posted.
How are teachers taught to teach Empower™ Reading?
- Teachers who wish to be trained to instruct Empower™ Reading must participate in a total of 5 full-day in-service workshops. Two of these in-service days will be offered at the end of August; the three subsequent in-services will be offered during the school year (one in November, one in February, one in April).
- In addition, each teacher will be assigned a teacher mentor who will visit the new Empower™ Reading teacher’s class at least 4 times and offer feedback and support (e.g., modeling of a class, answering questions) during these visits.