Program description
What is Empower™ Reading?
Accurate efficient decoding and word reading are the foundation upon which successful reading comprehension is built. Empower™ Reading is designed to teach the child word identification skills and decoding strategies and to promote their effective use of these strategies. Using these strategies, the child can develop the basic skills needed for independent reading for meaning, information, or pleasure.
Empower™ Reading instruction starts with the teaching of five decoding strategies:
- Sounding Out
- Rhyming
- Peeling Off
- Vowel Alert
- SPY
Struggling readers apply these strategies whenever they confront unknown words when reading.
Once students have a good understanding of the strategies, they apply a Game Plan that enables them to choose, use, check, and score their use of the five decoding strategies. The Game Plan dialogue guides the students’ application of the different strategies they have selected to decode unknown words.
The Goals of Empower™ Reading
- Teach struggling readers a set of effective strategies for decoding words and understanding text.
- Allow students to experience success in reading and gain confidence in their own reading skills.
- Help students become independent readers equipped with multiple word attack strategies.
- Empower students to move beyond decoding strategies and read independently for meaning, information.