Welcome to Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program for first grade students.  In our program, students work one on one with a certified Reading Recovery Teacher 30 minutes per day.  Our students learn to help themselves when they are reading and writing so that they will not need to rely so heavily on outside support.

Description

Reading Recovery was developed by Dr. Marie M. Clay, a psychologist and educator in New Zealand.  As part of her dissertation for her Ph.D., she observed and recorded the behaviors of "good" readers.  Then she asked herself how all readers could be taught to do what "good" readers do.  This question became the basis of a project that investigated the practices and techniques used by teachers to help "at risk" readers become efficient to the point that every time they read, they learn more about reading.  This project developed into what is now known as Reading Recovery.

Some children who are learning to read have difficulty because of the confusions they are developing about the way print works.  Reading Recovery was developed to provide these students with intensive one on one literacy instruction in order to help them make accelerated progress.

Selection

In June, the kindergarten teachers recommend the students they feel would most benefit from the Reading Recovery Program.  In the fall, with parent permission, the Observation Survey is administered.  At this time, first grade teachers have the opportunity to request assessment of new students.  Once the children are screened, a selection committee determines those who appear to be the most confused about early literacy.  As these children become successful readers and writers, they are "discontinued" from the program, and new students are selected based on the same criteria.

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Program

What Makes Reading Recovery Unique for Your Child

• Reading Recovery is an early intervention program. Reading Recovery works with children before they develop reading problems -- before they become confused and frustrated by failure to learn.  By learning strategies for themselves, the children develop a "self-extending system".  These children remain at risk for three years but more than likely, they will not need any further support for the rest of their school career.
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• Reading Recovery intervention is short-term. Children selected for the program work with their Reading Recovery Teacher for a period of 30 minutes each day.  The average amount of time spent in the program is 12 to 15 weeks.  However, some children need longer and may remain with the program for up to 20 weeks.  Reading Recovery is intended to supplement, not replace reading intruction in the classroom.  Your child will also be receiving conventional classroom instruction.
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• Reading Recovery is not a prepackaged program. Unlike most programs, which have a predetermined sequence of skills or materials, Reading Recovery builds on your children's strengths (what children know) in order to assist them in acquiring the strategies necessary for building a "self-extending system".  To be able to do this, your child's Reading Recovery Teacher will carefully observe and record what your child contributes to each lesson.  Using these observations and a firm knowledge of how children learn to read and write, the Reading Recovery Teacher selects from a wide range of books and teaching procedures to assist your child in becoming a competent reader and writer.
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• Reading Recovery expects children to be independent from the very first lesson.The teacher never does for children what they can already do for themselves.   The focus is on teaching your child how to help himself/herself using strategies such as self-monitoring, self-correcting, predicting and confirming, and using multiple sources of information to problem-solve.
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• Reading Recovery is flexible and responds to children's needs.  Rather than teaching from a predetermined sequence or selection of materials, your child's lesson is carefully constructed to meet his/her needs.  To be able to do this, your child's Reading Recovery Teacher has a firm understanding of how children learn to read and write and of where your child is along his/her personal path to literacy.  Your child's teacher is then able to help your child develop the strategies needed to gain meaning from what is read and to record personal meanings in writing.  Assessment is based on direct observation of your child's response to print.  It is on-going and is used to determine what the next lesson's focus will be.
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• Reading Recovery is based on the premise that children are active learners.  It recognizes that children bring their own understandings to the lesson and have their own meanings for what they say and read.  The lesson is designed to provide children with opportunities to think, form hypotheses, and to test and revise their understandings in order to aid problem-solving while reading.  The teacher supports your child in this effort, but it is your child who must do the work and solve the problems.
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• The goal of Reading Recovery is to enable the child to read and write within the average band of perfomance in his/her classroom. Your child has to be able to read and write like an average first grader.  Reading Recovery students enter our program behind their first-grade peers.  The Reading Recovery lesson helps them to clear up confusions that have contributed to their falling behind.  The "self-extending system"  they develop in the program enables them to continue learning after they leave it.  By the end of the year, a substantial percentage of Reading Recovery students are reading at an above-average level within the classroom.
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• The Reading Recovery lesson supports accelerated progress.Lesson design and intensive one-to-one instruction allows the Reading Recovery student to make faster than average progress in order to catch up with his/her peers.  The focus on strategies, rather than items (such as phoncis, letters, or words) allows this to happen.
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Reading Recovery is focused on meaning.  From the very beginning of the program, children read for meaning.  Each teacher has a wide selection of little books that are appealing to children and within their current levels of instruction.

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Phonics

What About Phonics?

Reading Recovery teachers teach children about letters, sounds, and words. It is important for your child to understand and be able to use the relationships between letters and sounds. It is more effective to address this need in continuous text rather than in isolation. This instruction occurs primarily during the writing portion of a Reading Recovery lesson. Your child is asked to listen for the sounds in words and record the letters or chunks of letters heard. Your child will be supported in the use of these relationships as a problem-solving strategy when reading.