How to Teach Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a teaching method designed to “catch up” the lowest performing students by the end of first grade. This program offers intensive, daily one-on-one lessons in reading and writing. Through monitoring and evaluation, teachers design lesson plans to meet individual strengths and weaknesses.

Instructions

1. Get certified. Reading Recovery teachers must be certified in order to teach this method (see Resources below).

2. Teach 30 minutes of daily one-on-one lessons. The effectiveness of the program hinges on the attendance of the teacher and student, and the guarantee of 30 minutes every day for Reading Recovery lessons.

3. Assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses. This allows the teacher to design lessons that will most effectively target areas of weakness, and help students develop strategies to use when reading and writing.

4. Present intensive lessons on language support focusing on reading and writing. During the lessons, students read short, familiar books and write stories relating to the books.

5. Maintain a running record of a student’s progress on text reading, spelling, daily lesson records and vocabulary usage. Re-evaluate strengths and weaknesses, as well as the strategies students are using.

Resources

• Reading Recovery Council of North America
• Certificate Programs in Reading Recovery