Reading Recovery is an early intervention program designed by
Marie M. Clay of New Zealand to serve children in first grade who are
having difficulty learning to read and write. The goal of
Reading Recovery is to produce independent readers whose reading and
writing improve whenever they read and write by means of a
self-extending system. This is done through accelerated
learning. Children are expected to make faster than average
progress so that they can catch up with other children in their
class.
Reading Recovery provides one-to-one
tutoring, five days per week, 30 minutes a day plus a few additional
minutes to practice fluent writing of selected high frequency words
and choose books for reading at home. Reading Recovery is
supplemental to classroom instruction and lasts an average of 12-20
weeks. Each child's daily program is discontinued when he/she
displays solid evidence of having developed a self-extending system
through using a variety of unprompted strategies to read increasingly
difficult text and to independently write their own messages.
Reading Recovery utilizes and builds upon genuine
conversations between teacher and child as the primary basis of
instruction. This teacher-child dialogue has been found to be an
effective method for teachers to help students learn to deal with
complex tasks such as reading. The Reading Recovery lesson
follows a strict routine of components containing activities that are
molded to meet the individual needs of each child based upon a daily
analysis of student progress by the teacher. Before the lesson
begins, the student practices fluent writing of one High Frequency
word on the chalk/dry erase board.
The 30-minute lesson then begins with its seven distinct parts:
1. The child rereads several familiar books.
2. The child rereads a book introduced in the prior lesson while the teacher does a running record (observes and records the child's reading behaviors). The teacher chooses 2-3 powerful teaching points.
3. The child is guided toward discovering how words work through
developing letter knowledge and word structure awareness and
familiarity.
4. The child
writes a story with the teacher providing opportunities for him/her
to hear and record sounds in words.
5. The child
rearranges his/her story from a cut-up sentence strip provided by the
teacher.
6. The teacher introduces a new book carefully selected for its learning opportunities.
7. The child reads the new book orchestrating his/her current
problem-solving strategies.
Early Strategies
Directional movement
One-to-one
matching
Locating known
words
Locating an
unknown word
Checking on oneself or self-monitoring
Cross-checking
on information
Searching for
cues
Self-correction
Meaning - gleaned through pictures and story line
Structure -
syntactically appropriate
Visual -
letter sounds, chunks (word families), prefixes & suffixes
University professors (Trainers of
Teacher Leaders) train Teacher Leaders who in turn train Teachers in
the Reading Recovery teaching techniques. Experienced teachers
are provided professional development in a year long curriculum that
integrates theory and practice and is characterized by intensive
interaction with colleagues. Teachers-in-training conduct
lessons Behind The Glass and are observed and given feedback by their
colleagues. In addition, Reading Recovery teacher leaders visit
teachers at their schools and help them critique and improve
their teaching and observation skills. All teachers involved in
Reading Recovery; Teacher Trainers, Teacher Leaders as well as
Reading Recovery Teachers are required to have students.
The Observation Survey contains six measures of a child's
attempts on reading and writing
tasks and provides information about what the child knows and can
control in his/her
learning. The components of the survey are:
1. Letter Identification - a list of 54 different characters
including upper and lower
case letters and the extra forms of a and g.
2. Word Test - a list of 20 words most frequently used in early reading materials.
3. Concepts about Print - a variety of tasks related to book reading,
familiarity with
books, and specific concepts about printed language.
4. Writing Vocabulary - children are given an opportunity to write
all of the words
they know in ten minutes.
5. Dictation Test - a story is read to the child who writes the words
using sound
analysis.
6. Text Reading Level - a determination of reading level based on
actual books
organized by a gradient of difficulty.
Roaming Around the Known refers to the first two weeks of a child's
program in
which the
teacher explores the child's known set of information and helps
establish a
working
relationship, boost the child's confidence, and share some reading
and
writing
opportunities.
Running Records are a systematic notation system of the teachers
observations of
the child's
processing of new text.
Discontinued refers to the decision to exit a child from the program
based upon the
readministered
Observation Survey scores. Also observations of the strategies
used
by the child
during reading and writing. Regular classroom performance is also
taken
into
consideration.
Program Children are those who received sixty or more lessons or who
were
successfully
discontinued from the program prior to having received sixty
lessons.
Continuing Contact refers to inservice training provided after the
initial training
year.
All RR teachers in the Northwest Tri-County Intermediate Unit
meet
approximately
once a month to observe and critique Behind the Glass lessons and
to
further their
knowledge and understanding of Reading Recovery
aspects.
Behind the Glass refers to teaching an actual lesson while being
observed by peers
through a
one-way glass.