Important Reading Recovery® Definitions

Full Implementation means having sufficient hours of trained Reading Recovery teacher time available to serve all of the children needing the program, as defined by that school, and that may change from year to year.

A Full Program is now defined as twenty weeks of instruction, which includes Roaming Around the Known. A school calendar week is defined as any week in which school is in session for at least one day even if no Reading Recovery sessions were provided due to absences, etc.

It is critical for cost effectiveness that teachers begin the first-round during the second week of September, at the latest. First-round children must finish their programs in early February (twenty school calendar weeks) in order for second-round children to get an opportunity for a full program.

School teams, in consultation with a Teacher Leader, should use twenty calendar weeks as a benchmark for making decisions about recommending further action for children who are not making accelerated progress.

It is expected that the Reading Recovery teacher aims to provide five lessons per week to each child who is in the program, but fewer than five lessons per week still constitutes one calendar week of instruction.

Schools are reminded that a full program is a guideline based on research findings to assure cost effectiveness of the program.

Random Sample Children are sampled from the population of children in each first grade class for whom Reading Recovery was not indicated. The goal of Reading Recovery is to accelerate the bottom minority of students so that their literacy skills are at the average level of this Random Sample group.

Refer to the Rubric for Assessing a School’s Operation Reading Recovery for guidelines for optimal benefit from Reading Recovery in your district or school.