Implement Reading Recovery in your District
Become a Reading Recovery Teacher
Services offered at ISU Training Site
High-quality classroom instruction
Primary prevention
Reaches a vast majority of children
Reading Recovery
Secondary prevention
Provides a safety net for the lowest 20-25 percent of first-grade children; successfully teaches most of these children
Special education or other school services
Tertiary prevention
Provides longer-term help for a few children whose problems were not all solved during the early intervention, no more than 1-2 percent of the age cohort
No classroom in the first grade will be adequate for all children. Acting as a safety net within a good literacy program, Reading Recovery can be a component of a strong, comprehensive approach to bring all students to literacy.
After 12-20 weeks of lessons, most Reading Recovery children will return to average performance in regular first-grade classrooms and continue their literacy learning with their classmates. For a small number of children, Reading Recovery will serve as an intensive period of diagnostic teaching prior to referral for special education or other school services. Both of these outcomes are positive for children and for the system.
Reading Recovery can play an important role in a school's implementation of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA; IDEA). Read a report about this (pdf).