Reading Recovery Overview
Developed by New Zealand educator Dr. Marie M. Clay, Reading
Recovery® is a short-term intervention for children who have the lowest
achievement in literacy learning in the first grade. Children meet
individually with a specially trained teacher for 30 minutes each day
for an average of 12-20 weeks. The goal is for children to develop
effective reading and writing strategies in order to work within an
average range of classroom performance. Reading Recovery is also
available to children whose initial reading instruction is in Spanish;
Descubriendo la Lectura (DLL) is well established in a number of sites
across the United States.
Reading Recovery is an early intervention. Proficient readers and
writers develop early. There is strong evidence in the research
literature that retention in grade level and long-term remediation
efforts do not enable low-progress children to catch up with grade-level
peers so that they can profit from classroom instruction. There is also
evidence that school failure leads to lack of self-esteem, diminished
confidence, school dropout, and other negative outcomes. It is,
therefore, necessary to redirect educational policy and funding to the
prevention of reading failure. Reading Recovery has a strong track
record of preventing literacy failure for many first graders through
early intervention.
The key to the successful implementation of Reading Recovery resides
in the training model. Three levels of professional staffing provide a
stable training structure: university trainers who train and support
teacher leaders; district- or site-level teacher leaders who train and
support teachers; and school-based teachers who work with the
hardest-to-teach children.
Initial teacher training is for one academic year with no loss of
service to children. As teachers are trained, they simultaneously
implement the intervention with children. Extensive use is made of a
one-way glass mirror for observing and talking about lessons with
children. Teachers become sensitive observers of students’ reading and
writing behaviors and develop skill in making moment-by-moment analyses
that inform teaching decisions.
Following the initial year of training, teachers continue to
participate in ongoing professional development sessions called
"continuing contact".
They continue to teach for their colleagues and to discuss their
interventions. Continuing contact sessions provide collaborative
opportunities for teachers to remain responsive to individual children,
to question the effectiveness of their practices, to get help from peers
on particularly hard-to-teach children, and to consider how new
knowledge in the field may influence their practice.
Reading Recovery is implemented annually in over 10,000 U.S.
schools. Reading Recovery is not an isolated phenomenon in schools.
Reading Recovery has a carefully designed plan for implementation into
existing systems. The success of any intervention such as Reading
Recovery is influenced by the quality of the decisions made about
implementation.
Replication studies document outcomes for all children served in
Reading Recovery. Consistent outcomes have been shown for children
served in English and in Spanish. A large majority of children who
complete a full series of lessons has been successful in reaching
average range literacy performance. There is also evidence across
several countries that the effects of Reading Recovery are long lasting. |
