The Greater Essex County District School Board has been chosen to take part in a Ministry of Education pilot project to improve literacy among students with severe learning disabilities.
School boards in Cambridge, London and Sudbury, are also taking part.
Over three years, the boards will offer those students an intensive reading-intervention program and take part in research to help boards across Ontario better understand their needs.
"We chose to do that ourselves, through the Special Education Department, last year," says Superintendent of Special Education Lynn McLaughlin about the board's program at six schools. "We were so impressed with results we were already going to be expanding to six additional schools, and now with ministry funding, we'll be able to do even more."
The program employs digital technology and encourages students to advocate better for themselves.
"We had children last year actually improve their reading level over only a five-month intervention period, up to one-and-a-half grade levels."
Laughlin says the board had partnered with Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto. She says the program focuses on the basics.
"Children who are in grade two or three for example who are still struggling in reading have missed something along the way," she says. "We need to go back to -- find out what that piece of the puzzle is that's missing."
A release from the board says a detailed plan for the pilot project is under development and will be offered at the beginning of the 2016 school year.
-- With files from Maureen Revait.