Spotlight

Summer 2007                                                                  Back to Spotlight home page

WOW! The sensation of discovery: faculty research and creativity

By Connie Briggs

In 1976, Marie Clay, founder of Reading Recovery, asked “What is possible when we change the design and delivery of traditional education for the children that teachers find hard to teach?”

Over 31 years later the answer to that question is that over 1.6 million first grade children who found learning to read and write most difficult have benefited from receiving Reading Recovery lessons and approximately 75% of these students met or exceeded grade level expectations.

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early literacy intervention designed to support classroom instruction for first grade children who find learning to read and write most difficult.  As the program director and trainer of teacher leaders at Emporia State University, I have the opportunity to work with teachers and teacher leaders across two states to help them become highly skilled at teaching struggling readers.  My research targets outcomes for children, results of teachers-in-training and those that are trained, as well as data that affects program implementation at the school, district, site, and state levels and is used to help strengthen teaching practices and program implementations.

Reading Recovery is supplemental to good classroom instruction. Children meet individually for 30 minutes with a specially trained teacher for an average of 12-20 weeks. During this relatively short-term instructional intervention, children make accelerated progress that allows them to catch up to their grade level peers and continue to work independently within an average group setting in the regular classroom program.  A sustained effects research study in Kansas, consistent with findings of longitudinal studies in other states, showed that children who complete a series of Reading Recovery lessons continue to make good progress in literacy learning beyond first grade (Briggs & Young, 2003).

Emporia State University is one of 23 regional university training centers in the U.S. providing training and support to teacher leaders and teachers in Kansas and Iowa as they work with the lowest achieving children.  In Iowa, support is provided to 18 teacher leaders and 552 teachers in 352 schools.  In Kansas, support is provided to 6 teacher leaders and 144 teachers in 107 schools.  Collectively, data were collected on over 5,500 children who receive a highly successful, research-based, data driven intervention during the 2005-2006 school year.  When you talk about positive results collectively on over 5,550 children you sometimes tend to overlook what this intervention means to an individual child. We know from research that without an early intervention children who are low achieving in first grade will continue to be low achieving in fourth grade and beyond.

Jonathan was the lowest reader in his first grade class.  Upon entering Reading Recovery he could only identify seven letters and write one word—his first name.  He recognized that he wasn’t learning to read like the other kids in his class and it had already begun to affect his self esteem.  After 15 weeks of one-to-one instruction with a highly skilled teacher, Jonathan was excited and proud to be in the above average reading group in his classroom.  Reading Recovery shows it is possible to change the trajectory of learning for low achieving children like Jonathan.  This kind of progress is only possible because of the superb professional development teachers receive to enable them to be better at observation, documentation, and analysis of teaching decisions.

Teachers keep detailed records of the daily lessons.  Further, entry, mid-year, and exit data for every child are collected and submitted online to the National Data Evaluation Center (NDEC) at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  Data collected at year-end are compared to a random selected comparison group to document that outcomes for Reading Recovery students are within the average reading level of grade level peers. 

My research documents the powerful learning experiences of teachers who receive Reading Recovery training as well as the positive results for children who without this intervention would likely continue to struggle in school.     The knowledge that I have personally gained from being involved with Reading Recovery has deepened my theoretical and practical understanding of how young children learn to read and write and has definitely had a positive impact on my teaching of undergraduate and graduate students in our teacher education program.

Links

Reading Recovery: www.readingrecovery.org

What Works Clearinghouse: http://www.readingrecovery.org/pdfs/WWCanalysis07.pdf

Kansas Sustained Effects Study (published article):  http://www.readingrecovery.org/sections/research/doesrrworkinkansas.asp

Executive Summary for Kansas (published article):  http://www.emporia.edu/readingrecovery/05-06execsummary.pdf

Iowa Executive Summary (published article):  http://www.emporia.edu/readingrecovery/0506-iowaexecsumm.pdf

Last Updated April 17, 2008