What Is Reading Recovery?

Overview

What is Reading Recovery?

Reading Recovery® is a highly effective short-term early literacy intervention for first grade children having extreme difficulty learning to read and write. For an average of 12 to 20 weeks children receive daily, one-to-one, 30-minute lessons taught by a specially trained teacher. Reading Recovery serves as a safety net for low achieving children and is a supplement to a good classroom program. During this intervention children make accelerated progress and develop effective reading and writing strategies so that they continue to work independently in the classroom and meet grade level expectations.

"The goal of Reading Recovery is to dramatically reduce the number of learners who have extreme difficulty with literacy learning and the cost of these learners to education systems." -Marie Clay, Implementation Visit to North Carolina, 1994

History of Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery was developed by New Zealand educator and psychologist Dr. Marie Clay in the mid-1970's. It began in the United States during 1984 as a collaboration of The Ohio State University, the Ohio Department of Education, and the Columbus Public Schools. The Reading Recovery program has expanded rapidly within the United States and is currently offered in schools in 49 states with more than 1,500,000 children served to date. It has also been implemented in the Department of Defense Schools, all Canadian provinces, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Lesley University, with its long-standing commitment to collaboration with schools, became a teacher leader training site in 1990. Following a year-long trainer training at The Ohio State University, Irene Fountas, Director of the Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery, began training the first class of Reading Recovery teachers and teacher leaders at Lesley University during the 1991-92 school year. In 1999, Eva Konstantellou joined the faculty as a university trainer of teacher leaders. The Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery has supported the expansion of Reading Recovery in Massachusetts and affiliated sites in New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont through the training of teacher leaders. The Center organizes professional development opportunities for trained and in-training Reading Recovery personnel, conducts and critiques research, provides information about Reading Recovery, and contributes to the work of other affiliated regional and national groups.

The Four Key Elements of Reading Recovery

1. A Powerful Literacy Prevention/Intervention for Children

Reading Recovery is both an early intervention program and an early identification program with two positive outcomes.

Positive outcome #1: After 12-20 weeks of daily lessons most children have developed an effective literacy processing system in reading and writing. They no longer require extra help and need only a good classroom literacy program to continue to make progress.

Positive outcome #2: A recommendation is made for additional assessment for a small number of children who will need more specialized longer-term help. In this way, Reading Recovery serves as a pre-referral program for children.

2. Training and Professional Development for Educators

Reading Recovery educators participate in a year-long, university-based training followed by extensive, continuing professional development through which they learn and continue to explore proven, research-based theory and procedures.

The Reading Recovery network operates on three levels. In schools, specially trained teachers work with children and participate in school teams that support and monitor the implementation of Reading Recovery at the school level. At the site level, teacher leaders work with children, train teachers and assist and monitor program implementation with the help of a site coordinator. In university training centers, trainers work with children, train teacher leaders, engage in research and support program implementation at affiliated sites.

The Three Levels of Training

3. Research and Evaluation

Reading Recovery is a research-based intervention. Ongoing data collection for every child served ensures the integrity of the program by monitoring results and providing support for participating educators and institutions.

4. A Long-Range Plan for Full Implementation

Educators in Reading Recovery schools work toward full implementation and literacy for all children. A school has reached full coverage when it has enough Reading Recovery teachers to reach all children defined by that school as needing Reading Recovery. This generally is 20 percent or more of the first-grade cohort.