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Participation - Teachers

The selection of an appropriate teacher is critical to the success of Reading Recovery. This section explains:

Roles and responsibilities

The primary responsibility of a Reading Recovery teacher is to teach students with literacy learning difficulties.

The teacher must also:

  • work closely with the school’s leadership and early years teams
  • communicate effectively with the parents of Reading Recovery students.

Literacy specialists

Reading Recovery teachers become literacy specialists. They develop keen observational skills and a repertoire of intervention strategies that can be adapted to meet the individual needs of at-risk students.

Reading Recovery teachers are selected from experienced early years literacy teachers. They participate in a year-long inservice program conducted by a trained Reading Recovery Tutor.

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Training and professional development

The year-long program integrates theory and practice and is characterised by intensive interaction with colleagues.

Following this training year, teachers continue their specialised professional development through ongoing interaction with their colleagues, Tutors and Trainers.

In the classroom

During a Reading Recovery lesson, students are involved in authentic reading and writing tasks. The Reading Recovery teacher demonstrates and teaches problem-solving strategies and helps the student to develop effective reading and writing processing.

Elements of a lesson

During each lesson, the student learns the strategies that good readers use when reading and writing.

Each lesson includes:

  • reading familiar texts
  • re-reading a text that was read for the first time the day before
  • working with letters or words
  • writing a story
  • assembling a cut-up story
  • reading a new book that will be read independently the next day.
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Accelerated progress

The goal of Reading Recovery is accelerated learning. Each student is expected to make faster-than-average progress so that they can catch up to other students in their class.

Reading Recovery teachers base their instruction on carefully documented daily observations of what each student already knows about reading and writing. This means that accelerated learning is within reach. Instruction begins from the student’s strengths, and thus the teacher doesn’t waste time teaching anything that is already known.

Structure of a lesson

A 30-minute Reading Recovery lesson includes six core activities in text reading and writing.

Text reading: Reading familiar books
Two or more familiar books are read in a phrased and fluent manner at the beginning of the lesson, providing an opportunity for the student to practise good reading behaviour.

Text reading: Taking a running record of yesterday's new book
The teacher takes a running record of the new book from the previous lesson: first the student reads the text without help, then the teacher teaches the student. The most powerful teaching points from the book are selected to obtain the quickest progress possible.

Working with letters and words
A short time is spent using magnetic letters to help the student extend his or her letter knowledge and word understanding.

Text writing: Writing a story
The student writes one or two sentences about a book or a personal experience. The teacher supports the writing process while teaching flexible writing strategies that will encourage independence.

Text reading: Reconstructing the cut-up story
The teacher writes the story on a strip of cardboard. It is then cut up and the student searches and checks for information to help them reassemble the story.

Text reading: Reading a new book
The teacher introduces a new book, providing information about content, how language is structured and some words to help the student use their reading strategies. The student reads the book with appropriate support from the teacher. A culmination of the lesson’s reading and writing work is linked to the new book.

Further information

Teacher training
This section highlights the requirements of the one-year teacher training course for Reading Recovery.

Research and resources
This section provides links to articles, case studies and websites for further information about Reading Recovery.

Reading Recovery results
The 2006 results of Reading Recovery in Victoria.

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