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Information About the Reading Recovery Program

Reading Recovery: Basic Facts

The goal of Reading Recovery is to dramatically reduce the number of first-grade students who have extreme difficulty learning to read and write and to reduce the cost of these learners to educational systems.

WHAT

Reading Recovery is a highly effective short-term intervention of one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. The intervention is most effective when it is available to all students who need it and is used as a supplement to good classroom teaching.

WHO

Reading Recovery serves the lowest-achieving first graders - the students who are not catching on to the complex set of concepts that make reading and writing possible.

HOW

Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher. As soon as students can read within the average range of their class and demonstrate that they can continue to achieve, their lessons are discontinued, and new students begin individual instruction.

OUTCOMES

There are two positive outcomes for students:

Over 15 years of Reading Recovery in North America, 82% of students who complete the full 12- to 20-week series of lessons, and 59% of all students who have any lessons in Reading Recovery, can read and write with the average range of performance of their class. Follow-up studies indicate that most Reading Recovery students also do well on standardized tests and maintain their gains in later years.
The few students who are still having difficulty after a full series of lessons are referred for further evaluation. They may be candidates for longer-term programs.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Professional development is an essential part of Reading Recovery. Training utilizes a three-tiered approach that includes teachers, teacher leaders, and university trainers. Professional development for teachers and teacher leaders begins with year-long graduate level study and is followed by ongoing training in succeeding years. In Reading Recovery, teachers develop observational skills and a repertoire of intervention strategies tailored to meet the individual needs of at-risk students.

HISTORY OF SUCCESS

Reading Recovery has a strong tradition of success with the hardest-to-teach children. Developed in New Zealand over 20 years ago, Reading Recovery now also operates in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense Dependents Schools, plus Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In its 15-year history in the United States, Reading Recovery has served more than 700,000 students.

Reading Recovery Lessons

LESSON OBJECTIVE

The objective of Reading Recovery lessons is to promote accelerated learning so that students catch up to their peers, close the achievement gap as quickly as possible, and continue to learn independently.

INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION

Reading Recovery teachers work with one student at a time over a 12- to 20-week period. Each daily 30-minute lesson is tailored to the needs of the individual child.
Reading Recovery teachers generally teach no more than four or five students per day in individual lessons. During the remainder of the day, teachers are often assigned to other duties such as classroom teaching or small group instruction.

ASSESSMENT

Reading Recovery teachers are trained to use Clay's An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement' to assess each child's strengths and confusions.
The first ten sessions provide further opportunities for assessment as the child engages in reading and writing
The teacher takes a running record of the child's progress every day and uses the data to plan future lessons.

LESSON CONTENT

Each lesson consists of reading familiar stories, reading a story that was read for the first time the day before, working with letters and/or words using magnetic letters, writing a story, assembling a cut-up story, and reading a new book.
The teacher teaches and demonstrates problem-solving strategies and provides just enough support to help the child develop effective strategies.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS, PHONICS, SPELLING, AND COMPREHENSION

Every lesson incorporates learning about letter/sound relationships.
Children are taught to segment sounds and work with spelling patterns.
Reading Recovery encourages comprehension and problem-solving with print, so that decoding is purposeful and students read fluently.

OUTCOMES

The series of Reading Recovery lessons has two possible positive outcomes:

The child no longer requires extra help and is able to make progress with classroom instruction. (Over 15 years of implementation in the United States, 82% of students who complete the full series of lessons and 59% of all students who have any Reading Recovery lessons achieved reading and writing success.)
Additional evaluation is recommended and further action is initiated to help the child continue making progress.

1 Clay, M.M. (1993). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.