What is Reading Recovery?
Reading Recovery is an early, short term intervention program for the lowest achieving students in the first grade. The goal is to enable these initially at-risk students to make accelerated progress and to become increasingly competent, independent readers and writers during approximately 12 to 20 weeks of daily, individual, 30 minute lessons. 

Why Reading Recovery?
Good readers and writers develop early. Retention and remediation, accompanying several years of failure, do not enable children to catch up with peers so that they can function productively in school or later on in society. The longer a child fails, the harder remediation becomes. Using early intervention, before failure is established, can reduce problems later in school.

Initially low-achieving children can, with special instruction, make accelerated progress. The more children successfully read and write, the more independent they become. Early intervention facilitates and expedites this process.

Program Overview
Reading Recovery is based on the assumption that intensive, high-quality help during the early years of schooling is the most productive investment of resources. The early years, which set the stage for later learning, are particularly critical for children who are at risk of failure.

Which Students Benefit?
Reading Recovery children are selected from the lowest 20 percent of their first grade classroom in reading and writing achievement, based on the results of the Observation Survey and teacher recommendation. 

How Does It Work?
The program provides an intensive, individually sequenced tutorial designed to build on the child's observed strengths. By untangling the confusion early on, at-risk children have the opportunity to read and write as well as the average in their classroom with confidence.

Benefits?
Students who complete the Reading Recovery program are independent learners who benefit from good classroom instruction usually without the need for future remediation.

• Reading Recovery reduces the number of students retained in first grade, and those needing special education, and long-term remedial help.
• Reading Recovery prevents the social and psychological problems associated with long-term failure and remediation.
• Reading Recovery trains teachers to be careful observers of children's reading behavior and to be professional decision makers in the teaching and learning of students.

Questions?
Contact Linda Welch, Reading Recovery Coordinator, at 248-573-8139