What is Reading Recovery?

• Reading Recovery (RR) is a school-based intervention designed to reduce literacy problems within an education system.
• It is an early intervention, giving children who have particular difficulties in reading and writing after their first year in primary school, a period of intensive, individual teaching.
• The intervention is not solely concerned with improving the reading and writing skills of the children in the age band in the mainstream class (around age six) but also helps them to develop more effective literacy strategies so that they will be able to continue to work at age appropriate levels and to progress satisfactorily in their own school’s instruction programme.
• A child’s RR series of lessons is finished when he or she is judged to be able to cope well with reading and writing and work successfully at age appropriate levels.  The aim is that, with a fully trained RR teacher, this should be achieved within 12-20 weeks.  As soon as the child leaves Reading Recovery, another enters and this rolling intervention continues throughout the year.
• A Reading Recovery teacher in training may succeed in providing RR to at least eight children during the year