Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a short-term intervention approach designed for English-speaking children aged five or six, who are the lowest achieving in literacy after their first year of school. For instance, a child who is unable to read the simplest of books or write their own name, after a year in school, would be appropriate for a referral to a Reading Recovery program. The intervention involves intensive one-to-one lessons for 30 minutes a day with a teacher trained in the Reading Recovery method, for between 12 and 20 weeks.

Reading Recovery was developed in the 1970s by New Zealand educator Marie Clay. After lengthy observations of early readers, Clay defined reading as a message-getting, problem-solving activity, and writing as a message-sending, problem-solving activity. Clay suggested that both activities involved linking invisible patterns of oral language with visible symbols.[1] The approach has come under increasing scrutiny in the 21st century.

  1. ^ Clay, Marie (1977). Reading: The Patterning of Complex Behaviour. Exeter, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Books.