What is Reading Recovery?
It’s an intensive 20-week early intervention program that helps young learners read. Grade 1 students are paired with specially-trained teachers for 30 minutes every school day, and most children are reading within a few short weeks.
Each teacher is trained to adapt to the learning needs and strengths of the child, with each lesson building on existing knowledge and books that match the child’s interests and experiences. In the end, it’s more than helping them learn to read and write — Reading Recovery is a one-on-one journey that builds their self-confidence.
Why it works
Reading Recovery is an intensive early intervention program that takes place over 20 weeks. Every school day, selected Grade 1 students who are having the most difficulty with reading and writing are paired with specially-trained teachers for just 30 minutes.
Each teacher is trained to adapt to the learning needs and strengths of the child, with each lesson building on existing knowledge and books that match the child’s interests and experiences. In the end, it’s more than helping them learn to read and write… Reading Recovery is a one-on-one journey that builds their self-confidence.
The fact that Reading Recovery is an early intervention is what makes it so successful. Working with a highly-skilled teacher for about 40 hours of targeted instruction means children can quickly catch up with their peers so they are well equipped for the rest of their educational journey.
Who needs Reading Recovery
Reading Recovery provides children in grade 1 who are struggling the most with reading and writing with one-on-one lessons tailored to their needs and provided by a specially trained teacher. In any given Grade 1 classroom, about 20% of students will struggle to learn to read and write.
Classroom teachers are trained to use the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement to determine which children are most in need of Reading Recovery. This tool and Canadian norms are used to interpret scores and determine which children are at the most need for an early literacy intervention. More details about the assessment tool can be found at www.rrcanada.org
Who teaches Reading Recovery?
Across Canada, there are over 1,000 specially-trained Reading Recovery teachers. Every year, about 200 new teachers participate in a year-long, hands-on intensive training experience. These teachers become highly skilled at knowing how to adapt to the learning needs and strengths of the child, each individual lesson builds on existing knowledge and books that match the child’s interests and experiences.
Each year, a typical Reading Recovery-trained teacher works one-on-one with 8-12 Reading Recovery students and 2,040 other students. Each teacher is trained by a Teacher Leader who supports the implementation of Reading Recovery and other literacy initiatives across an entire school district.
Lesson Content
Every daily 30-minute Reading Recovery lesson is tailored to meet the specific needs of the student. Our specially-trained teachers carefully observe the child and use their knowledge of a wide range of procedures to support each student to make fast progress in reading and writing.
Every lesson has several key components that help students learn how to problem solve and put what they learn into practice. Lessons include reading familiar books, taking a running record on a book introduced in the previous lesson, working with letters and/or words using magnetic letters, writing a story, assembling a cut up story and reading a new book.
During each lesson, children learn to hear and record sounds, and work with spelling patterns. Comprehension, independent problem solving and reading fluency are all included in Reading Recovery instruction.