At the beginning of a Reading Recovery programme
Has your child in Year 1 or Year 2 not yet begun to read and
write? They may be being assessed for a place on a Reading Recovery
programme. This will help them catch up fast. But first your child
will do some tasks that help the teacher find out what s/he already
knows about reading and writing. Then their lessons can begin, helping
your child build new things onto what is known. It is important to
find out what s/he knows so that the teacher can plan the best
programme for your child’s progress to be made.
Your child’s lessons in Reading Recovery
Each day your child will learn more about words and letters, read
lots of little books and write their own stories. This will be
happening in a half hour lesson with a Reading Recovery teacher.
After one to two terms your child will no longer need these lessons
as by then they will be reading and writing well on their own. Soon
after your child’s lessons have begun the Reading Recovery teacher
will invite you in to school to watch a lesson. Then you can see how
the teacher works with your child and how much s/he can do already.
How can you help?
If you can spend 10-15 mins each day reading with your child this
will help them progress even faster! Soon after they begin in
Reading Recovery they will bring 2-4 books home each day. They have
read these books before when they worked on them with the teacher.
Now they can enjoy re-reading them, quickly and with expression,
sounding just like a good reader sounds. You can help most by
praising their efforts, sharing with them their enjoyment of the
stories and talking about what’s happening. If, they get stuck on a
work you can say ‘you try’ and silently count to 3. If they
haven’t
got the word by then, just tell them, to keep the story reading going
smoothly. Sometimes going back to the beginning of the sentence and
have another ‘run at it’ helps, too. You can suggest this if the
troublesome word isn’t the first word. Most of the time it’s much
better to tell the word and enjoy the reading together!
Quite soon your child will also bring home each day a little
packet or envelope which contains their ‘cut up story’. This is a
sentence or two which they wrote together with the teacher today.
The teacher has written their words onto a strip of card and then cut
it up. In the lesson that day your child will have had a chance to
put the pieces back together so that they match the story s/he wrote.
It helps your child’s progress if they can do this again at home, once
or twice. The teacher will have included the whole story, probably
written on the outside of the envelope. So
- First let your child re-read the whole story on the envelope. Help them if they need it.
- Then cover up the whole story (turn the envelope over?) and let your child put the pieces back in
the same order as they wrote them. Encourage them to remember the story in their head and not (cheat)
look at the covered up story, while they put the puzzle together.
- Ask your child to read their put-together story to check it sounds right and then turn over the whole
story (envelope) so they can check it.
- Lots of praise for how well they are working! This helps.
This sounds like a long list of ‘How to do’ the ‘cut up story’ but your child will do it all in a
minute or two. You will be surprised!
At the end of your child’s Reading Recovery programme.
After around two terms your child will no longer need these lessons as by then they will be reading and
writing well on their own. The Reading Recovery teacher will check that your child knows how to use all
the reading and writing skills they have learned, to make sure that they can cope well in the classroom,
like their classmates, with out special help. Where possible, the Reading Recovery teacher will invite
you to watch another Reading Recovery lesson, before the programme finishes for you child, and will talk
to you about what happens next, and about how you can carry on helping your child.
In a few cases, children make progress in Reading Recovery, but not enough for the school to be sure
that they will be able to cope in the classroom without any more special help. Where possible, the school will make arrangements for these children to have help for longer, and they may arrange for a special assessment.
If you have any worries about the end of your child’s Reading Recovery programme do go to talk to the
Reading Recovery teacher and the school.
Keeping in touch
The Reading Recovery teacher and the class teacher will be very
pleased to exchange ideas about what you are seeing happen at home
and what they are seeing in school. A Reading Recovery programme
should be a very positive experience for everyone, where excellent
progress is the reward for a short time of working together each day.
Reading Recovery is a, once-only, special opportunity for your child
to get very skilled help to become a reader and writer when still
quite young. Everyone needs to work together to get the very best
outcome for your child!
Choosing books with your child
Encourage your child to borrow books from the library and own some
books to keep. You will want to be sure to choose ones that are going
to be enjoyed or useful to find out things that interest your child.
As well as finding a book your child likes the look of, they also
need to check if they can read it! Try opening the book at a page
and let them read it. If they have trouble with and you have to tell
them more than 5 words on that page, then you can choose it as one
for you to read to them, or put it back and try another one.
The children can do this check for themselves. They raise one finger
for each word that is hard. If all 5 fingers are up before they
finish the page then that book doesn’t pass the ‘5 finger test’.
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