reading recovery program

You’ve hit the nail on the head! I have some links describing Reading Recovery and some of the problems with it. E-mail me if you’re interested.

Margo

I think you are mixing up several things. First of all, as a classroom teacher, RSP teacher, Reading recovery teacher, and ELD teacher, I know about these programs. Your child’s classroom teacher can’t be a reading recovery teacher as she is teaching his class. The RR teacher is a highly trained teacher working in a one-on-one setting. So, his classroom teacher might need some help teaching reading to the whole class. If he has an RR teacher, she/he is working with your son individually in a highly structured tutorial for 30 min/day.

Hope that helps.

As far as I know there is no reason why classroom teachers cannot be trained in Reading Recovery- with the exception of the time involved- and I certainly know that there are a lot of teachers who use the strategies in their classroom instruction. Should they not do that? I am, BTW, not a particular fan of RR with LD students, but I do understand why some folks like it.

Robin

Much of the research data on Reading Recovery relies on flawed information-collecting techniques. Following is a link to independent research (done at the University of Oregon) on the value of Reading Recovery:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/rr.htm

Mary

Yes, a classroom teacher can also be a Reading Recovery teacher. If fact, one model has 2 Reading Recovery teachers who share a classroom. One teaches the class in the morning while the other one does Reading Recovery for 4 students. In the afternoon, they switch responsibilities.
The advantage is having well trained reading teachers in the classroom. Also, the teacher knows what the child is able to do in a 1:1 situation and can hold them to that in a group setting.

Of course a classroom teacher CAN be a RR teacher. In our district, the kindergarten teachers teach their classes in the am and do RR in the PM. I am a second grade teacher who teaches my 2nd graders most of the day, but is released by another kinder teacher for 45 to do one RR student.

The point I was making is that it is unlikely that your child’s classroom teacher and individual RR teacher are one and the same person.

I have worked in a variety of positions in my 21 years of teaching, and been through a variety of programs. I have yet to see any program that gathers data and analyzes it like RR. It’s a pain to fill out scantrons on each child, and send them to Ohio- but I”ve never worked in any intervention that continued to gather data. I respect that.

Hi MaryMN, You are absolutely right about RR. It is a very expensive program and doesn’t work. I have read all of the reviews and the result of RR is that the child is labeled LD. The schools still think that if you take a child out of the class and put him in a one-on-one situation, they will learn to read using the same method. This certainly doesn’t work. Reading Recovery is the remedial program within the whole language philosophy to teach reading. Pa is just making the same mistake that most of the states have made Noone in school districts are listening to unbiased research. This is one of the main reasons that private schools are cropping up everywhere.

Dear Margo,

I would be interested in the sites you mentioned on RR. I have lots of research data on RR showing how ineffective it is and I am always interested in any objective reports on RR. Could you let me know the ones you were referring to? Thanks so much, and if I have some you don’t have I will let you know what I have.

Cathy