Reading Recovery Overview

What is Reading Recovery?

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program for first grade students.  After rich pre-school and kindergarten experiences some children need additional support to help them become successful readers and writers.  Reading Recovery provides 30 minutes of daily individual instruction to these students and is designed based on children's strengths and needs.  Reading Recovery is a short term  intervention program (12-20 weeks) whose goal is to help children make accelerated reading and writing progress.

What does a 30 minute Reading Recovery lesson look like? 

Each lesson includes various activities to promote students reading and writing.  Each day your child will learn more about letters and words, read lots of books and write their own stories.  The lessons follow a framework but are individually designed to meet the needs of each child. 

Lessons include the following components:

Familiar Rereading - This is a time for students to enjoy stories they have read before.  Two to three familiar books are read which gives students the opportunity to practice fluent reading while also practicing new reading strategies.

Reading Yesterday's New Book - Children will read a book which was introduced and read once at the end of the previous day's lesson.  During the reading, the teacher observes the student and takes notes as the child reads.  After the reading, the teacher will make 1-2 teaching points with the child and together look at how a problem was solved  Together, we may also find a part that was tricky for the child and talk about ways to to tackle unknown words.   

Letter/Word Work - Students work with magnetic letters in order to support their understanding of how letters and words work.  This is a time where students are able to study letter sequence, and learn how to break words into parts. 

Writing & Cut Up Sentence - Students compose and write a story each day in their writing book.  This part of the lesson gives students many opportunities to work on letter formation, write high frequency words quickly, link letters to sounds, and use known words to figure out unknown words. 

Cut Up Sentence - Each child's sentence is then written again on a thin strip of paper and cut up.  The student then reassembles their sentence.  This activity helps a child pay attention to the order of words, sequences of letters and the way language is recorded in print. (This cut up sentence is sent home each night in an envelope, then the student glues it into their homework spiral).

New Book - Student are introduced to a new book everyday at their current reading level.  During the book introduction, the teacher and student look through the book to get the meaning of the story and to try out language structures and vocabulary.  After the introduction the child reads the new book.  During the reading of the new book the teacher offers support as needed.  The teacher might prompt the student to try a strategy or to search print, problem solve, and taught how to check their own reading.

 I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with your child.  I am so fortunate to work with these children everyday in order to help them be successful in their reading and writing.

I want to thank you for viewing this website and let you know that I can always be reached through e-mail at oglesbyt@pearlandisd.org or by calling the school at 281-412-1445.