Reading Recovery is a short-term reading intervention that has been offered in both Atkins Elementary and Keystone Elementary during the first grade year since the 2002-2003 school year. While every kindergarten through 6th grade student state-wide is currently screened for literacy growth three times a year per state guidelines, additional testing including word recognition, text reading, writing words, and dictated sentences are used to select students who might benefit from the one-on-one structured lessons Reading Recovery has to offer.
For a student who is selected for the Reading Recovery program, a series of 30-minute lessons are designed daily, specifically for that student, by a trained Reading Recovery teacher. That means no two lesson series look exactly the same because no two children enter the program with the exact same knowledge of written language and how words work.
Daily lessons include activities such as rereading “familiar books” to focus on fluency, constructing a message and learning how to record it with increased independence in “word solving”, putting together a “cut up sentence” from that day’s written message, “word work” focused on increasing fluency in both reading and writing of word and how to break them down into sounds, syllables, and chunks for analogy, and an introduction to a new book with the intent to apply new skill or strategy work from earlier in the lesson. A “Running Record” is also taken daily, which is a special note-taking procedure that helps the teacher locate and record words, phonics skills, or other strategies that the student is using or neglecting in order to inform future instruction.
This series of lessons can last anywhere from 12-20 weeks, after which the student’s progress is assessed to determine what types of support, if any, would be needed to help the student continue to make progress in their literacy growth..