"Reading Recovery is the best evidence yet of the direct link between good design and education excellence."
—K.G. Wilson & B. Daviss
Reading Recovery: Basic Facts
Goal
The goal of Reading Recovery is to dramatically reduce the number of
first-grade students who have extremely difficulty learning to read and
write and to reduce te 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 twelve to twenty 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 fifteen years of Reacing Recovery in North America, 82% of students who complete the full twelve to fifteen 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 univeristy trainers. Professional development for teachers and teacher leaders begins with year-long graduate level study and is followed by ongoing training in succeesing 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 twenty years ago, Reading Recovery now also operates in forty nine states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense Dependents Schools, plus Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In its fifteen year history in the United States, Reading Recovery has served more than 700,000 students.
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