One of the best aspects of my job is when I get to observe other practitioners in action. I’ve been very lucky to have such generous colleagues. This is the story of the first time I saw someone using Reading Recovery. Yes, it’s a story, an anecdote, and therefore not data, please bear that in mind. If you would like the science on Reading Recovery, you can find it here and here for starters.
When I started my private practice, one of the programs I kept hearing about was Reading Recovery. It seemed like every child who came to me for intervention had had this teaching.
Most of the local schools had a Reading Recovery teacher and every workshop I presented would have a of couple Reading Recovery-trained people there.
I found this slightly odd, as, from what I could glean, it was meant to be a long-term, highly effective intervention for struggling readers. Why did these children, who had accessed this program, then need further intervention?
At this point in my career, I was fairly unaware of the deep divide in theories of reading, known as the Reading Wars. I was on neither side of the fence, since I had no idea the fence existed. I had come straight from a linguistics background and into a working environment that was basically an uninterrupted flow of logical information put to good use.
I had already watched hundreds of children and adults become readers and I really didn’t think that helping people learn to read was a big deal. It was relatively easy to do and my colleagues and I spent our working lives fully expecting our students to read.
The hardest part of my job was getting people to spell well and write fluently. It still is. Spelling and writing are extremely complex processes. They make reading seem easy by comparison.
What caught my attention at this time though, was that Reading Recovery-taught children behaved differently to those who had not had access to the program. I observed three distinct habits in these children that others tended not to have:
- When getting ready to read aloud to me, the first thing their eyes would do would be to search around the page for a picture or ask me what the story was about. I use pictureless texts in my clinic because I want the children to decode the letters, not use comprehension strategies to guess words. My training and experience all pointed to this being logical and effective.
- When actually reading a text and coming across an unfamiliar word, their eyes would leave the word and start scanning around, again, looking for a picture clue.
- When they weren’t doing this wild, panic-stricken scanning, they would sometimes blurt out a word that began with the same letter as the unfamiliar word and carry on reading. For example, if I had a dollar for every time a child said ‘house’ for home, I’d be retired by now.
Not only did these children need explicit instruction in the alphabetic code, in sequencing, in segmenting and in blending sounds in words, but they needed to spend time undoing the awful habits 1-3. Their time in the clinic sometimes tripled because of the re-learning they had to do.
I began to be able to identify a Reading Recovery child at 50 paces. This made me very curious about how their lessons were conducted. To help gain a more informed opinion, I decided to take a look at the program and its underpinnings.
I started finding answers by observing a Reading Recovery session. I was invited to do so by a friend and colleague who worked in one of the local Catholic primary schools. I had the greatest admiration for this friend. She was a caring, intelligent person dedicated to doing the best she could for her students.
Taj was a seven year-old boy who had made no progress in reading and writing in two years of schooling. As such, he qualified for Reading Recovery. Surprisingly, no formal assessment had been given and no diagnosis had been made.
He had been informally assessed using the Observation Survey and several Running Records from Reading Recovery itself, but this was hardly an indicator of his underlying deficits and gave no instruction about how to tailor his intervention. Instead, he was put at a certain ‘level’ and the goal was to move him up to the next ‘level’.
Marie Clay, the author of Reading Recovery explains:
“For Reading Recovery we do not need an elaborate definition of reading difficulties. One simply takes the pupil from where he is to somewhere else.”
Oh if only that were true. But such a scattergun, vague approach is folly. We have the tools and knowledge to pinpoint a wide range of cognitive and linguistic deficits that impair reading. Good assessment is a gift to any practitioner. I found it disturbing that none of these had been used to gain a clearer picture of Taj.
Still, he was there and my friend was trying to help him. And besides, I’d watched many sessions with other practitioners and had been to dozens of professional development seminars, and I had never failed to come away with some good ideas about how to improve my practice. There was always some nugget, or innovation or something I could learn from watching others in action.
This time it was different. This time I sat there in shock and surprise. As part of my job as a mentor at Lindamood Bell Learning Processes, I would sit back and evaluate other clinicians, so I was used to novices making rookie mistakes. That is not what this was.
I myself have had observers suggest a slightly different approach for a problem encountered by a student and I have embraced that approach with success; a need for tweaking you might say. That is not what this was.
It was quite evident that my friend had spent many hours practising the elements in the lesson. She was no rookie. She delivered clear and precise instructions with confidence and ease. Her pacing was flawless, her manner was perfect, her equipment was organized and on hand and she really did come across as a seasoned professional. She and Taj had an excellent rapport and she genuinely cared about him and treated him with gentle deference at all times.
But for the first time in my career, I spent my observation time holding myself back from screaming, “What are you doing?! How is that going to help this child? What on Earth are you doing?”
I have not reacted so strongly to any teaching I’ve witnessed, before or since (except other Reading Recovery sessions on YouTube). Let me take you through it as well as I can remember it. The order of proceedings may vary from a standard Reading Recovery session since I’m recalling from over a decade ago, but these are the parts that stood out.
Taj came in and pulled out a book they had been practising. It contained surprisingly complex words but was predictable and repetitive with great big pictures and he read it from memory. I thought that this must have been some kind of warm-up, since nothing useful was being taught or learned. I was looking forward to the “enchantingly interesting” texts coming up that Clay talks about in her guidebook.
The teacher then pulled out a new, equally predictable book, but instead of getting down to reading the words, she asked him to point out the front cover, the back cover, and other things about the book that he plainly knew. Time was ticking away and still no teaching or learning had taken place.
The teacher then did the most incredible thing. She told him what the story was about and what was going to happen in the book. Spoiler alert! I don’t know about you, but if you want me to throw a book on the bonfire, just tell me what happens in the story. It’s the same with films. Tell me the plot and I can guarantee I’ll never watch it. You will have spoiled it for me.
So now there is a child sitting there with a big frown on his face, fidgeting, about to stumble his way through an already boring story that he knows is going to go a certain way and who, ten minutes into the lesson, has learned nothing.
More incredulity followed when the teacher, after some lengthy talking about the book, opened it up to the first page, pointed to the picture and then asked him to find a certain word. My memory won’t deliver the precise word to me, but let’s say she asked him to look for the word tree. Here is the dialogue:
Teacher: There is a tree in this story. What does tree begin with?
Taj: …umm, t.
Teacher: Good, now find the word tree.
Taj: Points to top.
Teacher: No.
Taj: Points to tree.
Teacher: Good.
Me in my head: Wait. What? Why aren’t you getting him to read the sounds in the word top and comparing it to the word he’s looking for? Why would you leave that opportunity to teach him to read just sitting there? You’re just getting him to guess based on incomplete information. What on Earth are you doing that for?
And so, after a bit more of this pointless shilly-shally word-searching, and after looking at all the pictures, page by page and talking about each excruciating plot point in the story, this yawning boy is directed to the first page again and told to read the book.
He came to a word he couldn’t predict. For the life of me I cannot remember the word, but he made a clear error of omission, in that the second letter, an embedded consonant like the t in stop, wasn’t pronounced. The teacher let him continue to the end of the sentence and then the crazy questioning began. For the sake of an example, let’s say he read ‘sap’ for slap. The dialogue went as follows (with me climbing the walls trying not to interrupt):
Teacher: Let’s look at this word here. What does it say?
Taj: Sap
Teacher: Would that make sense?
Taj: I don’t know.
Teacher: What do you see in the picture?
Taj: (Mutters something about the picture.)
Teacher: What is the first letter of the word?
Taj: S
Teacher: What would make sense here?
Taj: (frantically looking at the picture): I don’t know.
Teacher: What other letters do you see?
Taj: (naming the letters) l-a-p
Teacher: Can you see any words inside that word?
Taj: No.
Teacher: (pointing to the l) Okay, what is this letter?
Taj: L
Teacher: Do you know the sound it makes?
Taj: /l/
Teacher: Good. So what does this word say?
Taj: Sap.
This went on for precious minutes until the teacher told him the word and moved on.
Afterwards I asked the teacher if she was aware that Taj couldn’t perceive that he was saying ‘sap’ for slap. And that saying each sound in sequence and being aware that he had to articulate an /l/ sound straight after the /s/ would have helped him. I asked her if she was planning to do any follow up work on embedded consonants with him. She said she wasn’t planning to, no.
Then it was time to write a sentence. Again, I can’t remember if Taj wrote the sentence or the teacher wrote the sentence, but they did the funniest thing with it afterwards. They cut it into pieces, word by word, and Taj had to reconstruct it. It had to be the most pointless ten minutes of teaching I have ever seen. It was the kind of mindless busy-work a casual-relief teacher dreams up in order to take an unofficial break from teaching.
They also played about with some colourful magnetic letters, sorting them into groups based on their colours (!) and naming the letters, but making no reference to the sounds they represented, again, with no real purpose, sequence or system.
This was truly the worst reading lesson I have ever seen, even to this day. Taj was not being helped in any significant way. His needs were being overlooked. The causes of his difficulties were being ignored. The strategies he was being given were nonsensical and went against everything I’d ever learned about literacy acquisition.
And it wasn’t the teacher’s fault. As I said before, this was a friend and a colleague; a nice person with the best will in the world, highly trained and experienced believing she was helping him. It was bizarre.
I read everything about Reading Recovery that I could get my hands on. I spoke to countless Reading Recovery teachers and watched more excruciating Reading Recovery lessons on YouTube to make sure that this teacher was not an anomaly. Indeed she wasn’t.
What I found most disturbing was that she believed she was being helpful, and with no valid pre or post testing, nothing was contradicting her. Taj may very well have progressed through the program, memorizing and predicting the books, but I shudder to think where he is now.
It saddens me to see this execrable program being so widely embraced. Part of the reason is that Reading Recovery is incredibly systematic. Marie Clay wrote with clarity and authority. Her books, from a prose perspective, are a pleasure to read (provided you don’t know anything about teaching reading).
Its adherents are rigorously trained and the organisations behind it have means to distribute it that are staggeringly efficient. It’s just that it’s wrong.
Moves are afoot to rid schools of it in some districts. It’s very expensive and some in power recognize its ineffectiveness, but remnants of those techniques are everywhere; a story for another day.
Some approaches to reading instruction are more likely to bring success, while others bring an unacceptable rate of failure, no matter how well they are designed and implemented.
We need to begin with a better approach than Reading Recovery and its whole language cousins, and we need to ensure that teachers are trained to implement this better approach with the greatest skill possible. It is not enough for teachers to believe they’re helping children to read.
Teachers don’t need to be trained in some things or do they? Do they need training for everything? Surely, if a child (or adult ) does not make progress you have to ask the reason why? Isn’t that common sense? Unless this curious and extremely unsuccessful approach is discarded, Australia will continue to go down in the international tests and we willl have many more teenagers unable to get a job because they are not literate enough. How do we get the government to listen?
Governments are too reliant on their own Education Department’s advice. Current academics fail to fully teach our trainee teachers all of the skills required for teaching. Education Departments say they are following the advice of the university and the university says it is teaching in support of Education Department initiatives. Government is drawing on both groups of ‘experts’ for advice. We are stuck in an ideological stranglehold.
Every country fortunate enough to have an alphabetic language teaches the code of that language – with the exception of English speaking countries. Therein lies the problem and it is 3 decades old. Ideology knows no logic. it is a huge problem. Despite adverse teacher training, teachers are committed to their profession. They are out there seeking and finding better ways – phonic based ways. Some students get lucky in this game of Russian Roulette.
Mayhap change can happen from the outside-in. You can’t change the current internal ideology full stop. Extra funding allocated to those causing the problem only serves to perpetuate the problem. We need a paradigm shift from ideological belief back to proven logic.
Amen. Your article makes good sense. It goes against many aspects of “good reading.”
I found my training in RR seriously boring. I’d hate to think what the students thoughts of the very prescriptive process.
Thanks Astrid. I have heard other teachers comment on the mind-numbing aspect of the program!
Prescriptive is okay if you’re prescribing methods that will actually lead to reading. Reading Recovery is all about guessing and incomplete orthographic mapping.
What worries me is what students think when they go through the program and still fail to master literacy.
A very worthwhile read. Thank you. Confirms everything I always believed and teach myself though I don’t have the linguistics training you do and I predate whole language theory as a child.
Reading recovery has changed my perception on how to teach reading forever – I found it to be fantastic when implemented correctly & therein lies the problem. Not many schools are able to give it the time as they stuff timetables to show quantity over quality & therefore the same children attend SEN classes or most of their primary school years.
I did not enjoy the actual training sessions except for the teaching behind the screen – but I wasn’t there to enjoy them! I was there to gain an insight to this fantastic programme. The lasting success I have seen from it were outstanding except in cases of too much absenteeism.
Nope. Therein does not lie the problem. When implemented ‘correctly’, the problem is multiplied. Reading Recovery is built on encouraging children to guess at words. It’s a dead end and at odds with the established scientific consensus on the process of literacy acquisition.
If you can back your claims about how ‘fantastic’ it is and the ‘lasting success’ you have seen with actual data, from valid reading assessments over time (not Running Records), that would be good. But I’m pretty certain you can’t.
Reading Recovery is NOT built on ‘encouraging children to guess at words’. It encourages them to think about the meaning of the story they are reading, the syntax or whether the word makes sense and use the visual information in the word to read the word correctly. When the child is doing this they are integrating all sources of information and thus reading for meaning. I am a trained Reading Recovery teacher and can honestly say that my training was the best professional learning I have received in over 30 years as a teacher. I assisted students who could barely read a line of words on a page to be able to fluently and expressively read whole pages of text. And they were reading, not memorising.
Thanks for your comments, Julie. Let’s look at them piece by piece:
“Reading Recovery is NOT built on ‘encouraging children to guess at words’.”
Here’s the thing though: it is. Whether you like it or not, whether you call it something else or not, children exposed to this method become word guessers. This then has to be undone in many cases, wasting valuable time and opportunity to build foundational knowledge of the writing system. So it produces poor readers AND poor writers.
“It encourages them to think about the meaning of the story they are reading, the syntax or whether the word makes sense and use the visual information in the word to read the word correctly.”
Please come up to date on how children think and learn. A good starting point is John Sweller’s work on Cognitive Load Theory. RR violates so many principles of this elegant account of how learning takes place, that if you truly understood its implications, you would feel overwhelming shame about past practice. This has happened to countless former RR teachers. It’s uncomfortable but when you know better, you do better.
As for “visual information”, this plays an insignificant role in word storage and retrieval. Are you, a teacher of over 30 years, seriously saying that you don’t know how the brain stores and retrieves information about words? Is the term ‘orthographic mapping’ unfamiliar to you? If so, I would encourage you to look into it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
“I am a trained Reading Recovery teacher and can honestly say that my training was the best professional learning I have received in over 30 years as a teacher.”
Then you have been deprived of high quality PD for all that time and I am sad for you. But sadder still is the thought of all the dozens of children you could have served better and didn’t. I wonder what happened to them.
“I assisted students who could barely read a line of words on a page to be able to fluently and expressively read whole pages of text.”
That’s the thing though, YOU didn’t. Those kids were going to learn to read anyway no matter what you did. But cast your mind back to those in your caseload who didn’t make it (and please don’t tell me there weren’t any because then I’d know you were being dishonest). What about those who you discontinued having made little or no progress? What then? How often did you console yourself with thoughts of how it was their fault or their parents’ fault or their home life or their attitude or their dyslexia? Did you really follow up, one, two, three years afterwards? How was their spelling? Did they stay in school? I know you’ll try to assert that they all did absolutely fine, but deep in your heart, you know, and I know, it’s not true and that you’d prefer not to think about them.
Well, I think about them. I think about all the kids RR failed and are failing right now. And I write about it and I look into why they were failed and I speak out about it, because they deserve better, and because teachers wedded to this philosophy deserve to be asked to look beyond their preconceptions and conditioning and biases and see RR and its whole language/balanced literacy offshoots for what they are.
Well said Lyn …. RR definitely teaches kids to guess and unless they get a patient teacher who perseveres and insists they stop guessing words it’s almost impossible to break the habit!
….I love your approach and that you explain why you think the way you do and back it up with research based evidence – too many educators are not using their critical thinking skills to evaluate what and how they teach !
Pam
Thank you for your work and courage.
There is so much rubbish being promoted as “The science of reading”!
“It encourages them to think about the meaning of the story they are reading, ”. Eh? Logically I would believe that reading recovery would have to do something with, ”I don’t know, reading.
So much for logical thinking…
To All,
Thank you for your articulate points made on behalf of RR and Other reading interventions. The best educators pick and choose wisely, based on their experience, scholarly articles and research vetted by the best minds in education. Please read “The Trouble With Binaries: A Perspective on theScience of Reading” by David B. Yaden Jr., David Reinking, and Peter Smagorinsky, all researchers in the area of literacy. Reading is not “a technical exercise” as quoted within “unsettling the science of reading: who is being sold a story?” by Nick Covington. Perhaps the writings and research of Noam Chomsky, Mark Seidenberg, Timothy Shanahan, to name only a few, aren’t worth reading….that’s ironic in my opinion! Also sign up to receive articles and discussion points regarding education, poverty in schools, libraries and so much more from The Human Restoration Project!
Thank you for your work and courage.
There is so much rubbish being promoted as “The science of reading”!
It’s always the way. Thank you for your kind comment.
Mary: I agree. I found much success and saw wonderful gains in reading of the children I taught in Reading Recovery. The training I received as a RR teacher was one of the most impactful of my career as a reading teacher. I NEVER taught students to GUESS at words and do not know where that misconception comes from. The badmouthing that this method, as well as its founder, Marie Clay, receives, is extremely upsetting to me. Reporters and others are relying on incomplete information about the program to make inaccurate and damaging claims.
Thanks for your comment, Diane. I’m wondering why two RR apologists are suddenly commenting on a blog post I wrote six years ago. Where did you stumble across this, Diane?
As to your points:
“I agree. I found much success and saw wonderful gains in reading of the children I taught in Reading Recovery. The training I received as a RR teacher was one of the most impactful of my career as a reading teacher.”
This is the same old statement that every teacher who has deemed RR sufficient trots out. Perhaps you need to talk to RR-trained teachers who have had substantially better results when using approaches based on the findings of a century of cognitive science. With that in mind, can you name any teachers who were first trained in structured, rather than balanced literacy approaches, who abandoned those in favour of RR?
I travel the world speaking to hundreds of teachers a year, and not one has ever done this, to my knowledge. Why is the abandonment of first-taught principles always this way round?
If you ask children to take their eyes off an unfamiliar word without processing the grapheme-phoneme relationships in order and in their entirety, you are asking them to GUESS. You can dress it up in whatever language you want, Diane, but you do them a disservice any time you prompt a novice or striving reader to look elsewhere to get a word off a page.
Please see this blog piece for more information about what ACTUALLY goes on in children’s minds when they’re building their lexicon:
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2024/03/help-my-literacy-lead-has-said-we-have.html
And while we’re on the subject of damage: Marie Clay and her so-called “research” were highly destructive forces in education. Her principles have been shown time and time again to be based on falsehoods. Her method is objectionable for myriad reasons. Time to come up to speed on what all educators should know about reading, thinking, remembering and how it relates to literacy development. Emily Hanford can understand it and helps thousands of people understand it. Why can’t you?
I’m not sure why you must berate those who are politely putting forth their opinions with such sarcasm and defensiveness? Just bad manners and such is the polarized world we live in. I believe there is much to take from a myriad of reading philosophies. The best educators in the world support Reading Recovery (they teach at OISE) and continue to do so. Nobody is suggesting RR is the way, the truth and the light LOL . I tell my adult children to read a variety of sources before forming an opinion and to consider the sources of those who promote THE WAY.
However, I Have witnessed mind-numbing Science of Reading lessons , including UFLI and heard the groans of the children before these dreaded lessons. Perhaps it is the delivery or the complete absence of quality literature, in Any form, as the teacher moves on to the next subject, checking off the box for “Literacy”….tragic!
Una Malone
But Una, you did exactly the same thing just now with your ‘tragic’ comment.
I have a couple of questions for you though: These lessons you observed where you claim the kids were groaning:
In what capacity were you an observer?
Did you communicate your concerns to the teacher(s) of these lessons?
Did you take any steps to make the situation ‘better’ in your view?
Were you able to obtain before and after data on these children, i.e. were there signs of progress?
These are important questions in terms of context regarding your misgivings of at least one named approach. I’d be very interested in your answers.
Lyn,
Did you observe this lesson years ago and are just writing about it now? This feels like an unfair and incredibly unreliable way to write an article… Perhaps you should go to a training site, listen to the discussions of the teachers and teacher leader, ask questions, get some more clarification, listen to the discussions, and see the continual PD. I am a trained RR teacher and also trained in Wilson, as well as have a host of other trainings in literacy, including studying as a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand- researching the early literacy intervention process in NZ- I am well versed in early literacy acquisition and the development of reading and writing in youngsters- observing one lesson several years ago by one teacher, does not make you an expert on the strategies of Reading Recovery (it is a not a “program”). It might be helpful to base your strong opinions on more substantial observations. The replies discussing how “mind numbing” the training is, is just ridiculous! The training allows teachers to have their students work and data in front of them and discuss next steps in “real time” with colleagues. Unlike a program like OG or Wilson, this is not a lock-step “program”- and remember I’m trained in Wilson- Level 1, so I know how dry that program can be. I feel like I need to speak up because this article is so negative. All kids need different things- some kids benefit from an OG like approach, others may not need something less intense, others may need something else-
Kate,
You say: “Did you observe this lesson years ago and are just writing about it now? This feels like an unfair and incredibly unreliable way to write an article…”
I say: I’ll give you three guesses what I’ve been doing since observing that lesson those years ago. Want to know? I’ve been dealing with children badly affected by this program and its philosophical offshoots (e.g. balanced literacy, ‘range of strategies’, ‘meaning-making’) who have ended up not being able to read. So when you tell me about what my piece feels like, perhaps you might want to consider what reading failure feels like for them.
You say: “Perhaps you should go to a training site, listen to the discussions of the teachers and teacher leader, ask questions, get some more clarification, listen to the discussions, and see the continual PD.”
I say: Please don’t mistake my antipathy for this program as lack of knowledge about it. I probably know more about it than you do.
You say: “I am a trained RR teacher and also trained in Wilson, as well as have a host of other trainings in literacy, including studying as a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand- researching the early literacy intervention process in NZ-”
I say: So what? You’re still wrong.
You say: “I am well versed in early literacy acquisition and the development of reading and writing in youngsters-”
I say: You obviously aren’t if you defend this tripe.
You say: “…observing one lesson several years ago by one teacher, does not make you an expert on the strategies of Reading Recovery…”
I say: I have never said it does.
You say: “It is not a program”
I say: lol
You say: “It might be helpful to base your strong opinions on more substantial observations.”
I say: I take it you’re not familiar with the scope of my work then.
You say: “I feel like I need to speak up because this article is so negative.”
I say: Let me tell you what’s negative: the self-talk that children failing to learn to read come up with. It’s not just, ‘I’m dumb’ or ‘I don’t like school’. It’s ‘I want to die’. Reading Recovery, the philosophical underpinnings of this low quality program and people who defend it for God knows what reason, are directly responsible for this.
You say: “All kids need different things-”
I say: This is a meaningless statement.
But you go ahead and live in your bubble of failing to teach kids to read and write, because it’s your feelings, your investment of time, your philosophy and your job that matters, not the lives of all the children your approach has damaged. Right?
Kate,
Thank you for your articulate points made on behalf of RR and Other reading interventions. The best educators pick and choose wisely, based on their experience, scholarly articles and research vetted by the best minds in education. Please read “The Trouble With Binaries: A Perspective on theScience of Reading” by David B. Yaden Jr., David Reinking, and Peter Smagorinsky, all researchers in the area of literacy. Reading is not “a technical exercise” as quoted within “unsettling the science of reading: who is being sold a story?” by Nick Covington. Perhaps the writings and research of Noam Chomsky, Mark Seidenberg, Timothy Shanahan, to name only a few, aren’t worth reading….that’s ironic in my opinion! Also sign up to receive articles and discussion points regarding education, poverty in schools, libraries and so much more from The Human Restoration Project!
Una, articulate or not, Kate never responded. That’s a shame. This is a good debate. Perhaps you’d like to address my questions?
What research by Chomsky, Shanahan and Seidenberg are you specifically referring to? I’m interested in seeing how you imagine they bolster your defence of Reading Recovery.
Hi Kate. I’m new to the nuances of this debate on the programme. Just one question about your response (since I am not familiar with Reading Recovery itself). Is this process of questioning during the lesson, an accurate reflection of the way these lessons are conducted? Because that is the kind of poor teaching I have seen over the last 35 years of my teaching career.
I can understand why you didn’t use data. If you did you wouldn’t be able to make Reading Recovery sound like a dead end program. Data, real data, shows it works. They do not encourage students to guess at words. That is very untrue. You are bias because you are selling your product. Reading Recovery is hard hitting competition for what you’re selling
Data? Like that collected during Observation Surveys and Running Records? Do you understand the concept of assessment validity and reliability? I doubt it, given your incorrect usage of the word ‘bias’.
And trotting out the old straw man argument “You’re just saying that so you can sell something” ignores the very obvious fact that RR is a multi-million dollar industry. Or did you think it was all for charity?
I don’t compete with RR. I happily promote and link to other businesses that could be classed as competition all the time. Little Learners Read Write Inc, Tessa Daffern’s work on Spelling, William Van Cleave, LETRS etc. all get a big thumbs up in everything I say and do. No, I say these things about RR not because it’s competition, but because it stinks.
Hi, I have just stumbled across this article after several searches for ways or programs to help my grade 1 , 6 yr old to read…..my grade 2 is 2 yrs ahead of my grade 1…..I know my grade 1 is falling further and further behind, I’m lost as to what is wrong, teachers are interested and say she’s fine…I know different, she is not slow or stupid. This article just explained almost word for word what she does , has done for the last year! Scanning the page for clues and pictures! Drives me crazy! What are you doing? Look at the words! Guessing!!! More guessing! Memorising!!! Boredom!!! First letter of word…guess the rest! …lost…look at the picture or ask me what’s happening???
She has been stuck for about a year at level 7-8, her sibling one year older was well ahead at the same time level 27. This is stressful, I know everything else is falling way behind, writing spelling maths, everything else requires Reading. Please what should I do? I was about to insist she do reading recovery at school!! Not now I’ve read this, how do I reteach her? I know it must have been her prep teacher, these patterns started at school, and I wondered why her sibling did not use these annoying techniques- simple answer different teacher!
Thankyou for writing this article.
https://pages.uoregon.edu/bgrossen/rr.htm
This is a very interesting and rigorous paper about the “data.”
I have been trying for years to get districts to understand that their investments in Reading Recovery have not benefitted their students! I have bashed my head against a wall (figuratively of course) showing the science of how children learn to read. I cannot thank you enough for this article and all of your comments backed by research against proponents of Reading Recovery. Someday this will stop, someday!! Until then rock on; systematic, explicit, multisensory, phonics-based programs with phonological awareness activities embedded in!!
Thanks Kristen. I don’t publish all the comments because they’re so utterly nonsensical (and very obnoxious from time to time). I find it hilarious that people come on to my website, read my articles, say nasty/stupid/untrue things and then expect me to hit the ‘publish’ button (I’m looking at you, Lynda Parsons!). It’s as if they don’t understand the basics of publishing on the internet. Goes along with their understanding of the basics of literacy acquisition I suppose…
the Day I listened to Dr Maryanne Wolfe and Dr Lorraine Hammond in Adelaide South Australia, about 3 years ago, I sat there after being a Reading Recovery Teacher for 20 years. I said to my colleague. What the heck have I been doing for 20 years. I realized we had all been taken on a ride of the Whole Language approach which did not have any true scientific evidence. It was research based, which meant anyone could do research and make a claim that their information was correct. I have read many of the true evidence based reports as well as scientific information that has come with new technology on how the brain works and I will never go back to Reading Recovery as a program. I am now working with small groups of students using Phonological Awareness ( sub category Phonemic Awareness) using David Kilpatricks’ ” Equipped for reading Success” as well as a systematic synthetic phonics approach to reading using Decodable texts ( published by UK Phonics) Our school has also taken on this approach beginning with the foundation classes last year and Grade 1 and 2 this year. We are finally seeing success. Just remember other Reading Recovery Teachers. We are life long learners and we will only improve if we are prepared to take on board more scientific evidence. Thank you Lyne Stone, Maryanne Wolf, David Kilpatrick, Dr Lorraine Hammond. (Australia) Louisa Moats and many more……
Lyn,
Thank you so very much for this post. What you describe in your ex-Reading Recovery students is precisely what I observed in a number of the teenagers I helped prepare for the American SAT and ACT college entrance exams. The panicked scanning around the page, the extraordinary difficulty reading in a normal left-right sequence… I wasn’t trained as a reading specialist, and it took me almost a decade to figure out that it was a result of three-cueing instruction (https://www.breakingthecode.com/why-i-care-so-much-about-phonics/). Once I realized what was going on, however, I started to understand just how divorced from reality a lot of reading instruction has become.
I really wonder why this type of disordered reading isn’t discussed more frequently; I saw it often enough working with relatively few students that the problem has to be pretty widespread. I suspect that part of the issue is that parents/teachers mostly aren’t looking closely enough to realize that children are reading this way. It also seems plausible that some teachers trained to teach cueing methods see no problem with this type of reading, or more disturbingly, consider it a positive development.
Erica
Thank you for your comments, Erica. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is widespread and teachers actively engage in defending 3-cueing even in the face of evidence for the harm it does. It’s an idelogical/personal, belief-driven view and is immune to logic.
Tank you for this insightful article. I taught with a fellow teacher who was ‘trained’ in Reading Recovery and used it in her classroom. It never settled well with me but I could never express what I so strongly disliked about it. You put into words what I could not. And I thank you for it.
My pleasure, Leigh. We need to call it out wherever we see it.
Lyn
Oh my, yes, I have come to this slowly, reluctant to think that something so indoctrinated could be so lacking . I do not think of it as wrong, just unfounded, lacking many elements of literacy acquisition, incomplete and , because it does not address what it initially tests, a waste of time.
Yes, the training was tedious and dry. Yes, the students needed much more intervention at later dates. Why? They still needed the tools and knowledge that were not taught initially? As to the guessing, well, phonemic awareness is one things but many words have unique enunciations and therefore STM and LTM need to be engaged. Many of my questions during training and many of my actions ( which I had to hide when being observed) resulted from this evaluation i made.
Why check the letter/sound /word knowledge , then fail to address the gaps and confusions? Where was scientifically conducted auditory processing testing in all of this? Why was there such a script for teachers, when clearly there were absolute teaching moments with each student? Why address word or vocab. knowledge when letters and sounds and phonemes were not embedded? I am looking forward to my research project which will be looking at this program……and advocating for a better way in the education system….
Thanks, Gayle,
You ask excellent questions of course. When you say ‘auditory processing’, which subtests in particular do you mean? I’d also love to hear more about your research project.
Cheers,
Lyn
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What I do not understand is all the focus on “Reading Recovery” and remediation… Logically it tells me that the initial objective of teaching a child to read (and I even see this remediation in math) was a complete and utter failure; there is no effort to go back and analyze where it all went south in the first place. So you continue to advance incomplete children and counter with more staff to attempt to fix the shortcomings with more shortcomings, the next logical step would be more and more remediators as you advance these kids into the higher grades. This leaves me dumbfounded. If I wrote a book about Mikey the Mushroom, and wanted to find the word “mushroom” and my paragraph was:
It was a Majestic Monday, the morning rays mingled with the mists of the moor and the moon magically moved off the edge of the horizon. Mikey the Mushroom marched up to his mother, who was making meatballs and mustard sandwiches, and muttered, “Momma, make me a masterful mayonnaise and mincemeat meal on marbled rye, for today, I feel I may move mountains.”
I guess you limit the words that start with a particular letter. This method should be called, “Go Fish!”
It is without a doubt, very confronting to read this. A sad and accurate explanation of the process of reading intervention in schools. I did this, I taught this way since graduating from The University of Melbourne in 1999. At the time, Melb Uni graduates were highly sought after as we had ‘extensive training’ in the 3 cueing system and miscue analysis.
When my son was born in 2009 I took a break from the classroom. A few years later I went back and took on a role as EAL teacher. Luckily I worked alongside a trained and experienced EAL teacher and had the opportunity to learn more about language. In particular, the connection between oral language & writing, word level work and sentence level work. But ,my time out of the classroom came at a cost. Unbeknown to me, a revolution was taking place – F & P, Reading Cafes and Just Right Libraries were popping up in schools much like new houses on the outskirts of Melbourne. This expectation of knowledge of F & P deemed me irrelevant and unsuitable as a classroom teacher. As I was unable to get a job in the classroom, I went on to do other things; Leaving the F & P
Just Righters to so-their-thing!
However during that time, my son – born in
2009 with above average language capabilities and high IQ was becoming a ‘struggling reader’.
Long story short, after desperately educating myself in the F & P ‘solution’ that my respected former colleagues were raving about, I did get results. But they were short lived and only valid in the realm of predictable text reading. 🤷♀️🤔 of course that makes sense now but at the time its all I had and all I knew.
By that stage, he was falling so far behind his peers, school was essentially pointing the blame at us, do we read to him 🤷♀️ if only he tried harder, he really should study more, he needs to pay attention etc. Then, a parent I had met mentioned the word ‘dyslexia’. 💡 moment! (Once I overcame the utter embarrassment of spending two decades in the realm of primary education and not having a clue about dyslexia)
So, this led me down the Science of Reading Path. For the past 18 months I have learned more than I did in all my teacher training and years in the classroom. Yet still, I cannot teach in the classroom because I lack knowledge and experience in F & P. 🤷♀️
How many struggling readers so we need as proof that Reading Instruction has n Tier 1 is flawed?
It is without a doubt, very confronting to read this. A sad and accurate explanation of the process of reading intervention in schools. I did this, I taught this way since graduating from The University of Melbourne in 1999. At the time, Melb Uni graduates were highly sought after as we had ‘extensive training’ in the 3 cueing system and miscue analysis.
When my son was born in 2009 I took a break from the classroom. A few years later I went back and took on a role as EAL teacher. Luckily I worked alongside a trained and experienced EAL teacher and had the opportunity to learn more about language. In particular, the connection between oral language & writing, word level work and sentence level work. But ,my time out of the classroom came at a cost. Unbeknown to me, a revolution was taking place – F & P, Reading Cafes and Just Right Libraries were popping up in schools much like new houses on the outskirts of Melbourne. This expectation of having knowledge of F & P deemed me irrelevant and unsuitable as a classroom teacher. As I was unable to get a job in the classroom, I went on to do other things; Leaving the F & P & Just Righters to do-their-thing!
However during that time, my son(born in
2009) with above average language capabilities and high IQ was becoming a ‘struggling reader’.
Long story short, after desperately educating myself in the F & P ‘solution’ that my respected former colleagues were raving about, I did get results. But they were short lived and only valid in the realm of predictable text reading. 🤷♀️🤔 of course that makes sense now but at the time its all I had and all I knew.
By that stage, he was falling so far behind his peers, school was pointing the blame at us, do we read to him ? 🤷♀️ if only he tried harder, he really should study more, he needs to pay attention etc. Then, a parent I had met mentioned the word ‘dyslexia’. 💡 moment! (Once I overcame the utter embarrassment of spending two decades in the realm of primary education and not having a clue about dyslexia)
So, this led me down the Science of Reading Path. For the past 18 months I have learned more than I did in all my teacher training and years in the classroom. Yet still, I cannot teach in the classroom because I lack knowledge and experience in F & P. 🤷♀️
How many struggling readers do we need as proof that Reading Instruction in Tier 1 is flawed?
I was RR trained and my son had RR intervention. I used to think I was bad at it because I told the students to sound the words out, something that I was told NOT to do. I did it anyway. I’m glad I was RR trained because it opened my eyes, it was so wrong!
I have since had LETRS training, Sounds Write training, Writing Revolution training and I read anything and everything SOR based.
I am so sad that my son, who is in Grade 6 now is a RR tragic. He has needed further intervention and it is only since looking into other options that I am able to help him.
I would never advocate for RR.
Thanks for the article Lyn.
Perhaps there are underlying issues with learners which should be accessed through other means than Reading Recovery.
Having witnessed more than a hundred successful students of Reading Recovery I would always advocate for this intervention. The self-esteem, processing strategies and value of meaningful strategic reading of the text has been instrumental in these students’ success. Where a student has needed ongoing support at the word level through targeted interventions such as LETRS, dyslexia training, Words and Sounds we will be forever debating each ones’ worth.
As educated and wise adults whose only intention is to enrich and build on children’s literacy experiences let us not criticise methods of interventions. Rather, let us consider the individual and their needs. No learning is wasted. There is no such thing as one-size-fit-all. In this complex world we need to build on what is known and grow from there.
Eleonora, let’s talk about scale. I witness over a hundred learners in a week and have been doing so for the bulk of my career, so in terms of scale, I think I’m in a pretty good position to make judgement calls about methodology. If I could find a better way of helping children learn to read than the methods I, and my staff, and everyone I train are using now, I would be using that. Reading Recovery is not it. Show me the busy, successful intervention practices using it. I’ll wait.
I think you may have a problem with the concept of judgement and critique. I can do nothing about that. It is our duty to be lifelong learners, and that includes rejecting what we know to be false/damaging/wasteful. Reading Recovery is all that and more.
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As an experienced primary school teacher it always surprises me that a fellow experienced primary school teacher such as this author would criticise any method of teaching reading, knowing the complexities of the human brain and how one learns to read.
There is no one ‘right’ way to embed learning. Precise work around building memory in the brain may be beneficial. Until you have a learner who is ready to learn no learning can take place. I would caution this author to think carefully about criticising, rather than appraising. Reading Recovery strategies focus on the way the brain processes information.
The most honest part of this article is that the author states her anecdotal recollections of ten years ago. If, indeed, the author has researched the works of Marie Clay it is highly dubious that the criticisms laid here are plausible.
Thanks for your comments. Happy to debate with you. I will list out my counter-arguments below:
1. Where have I said I’m an experienced primary school teacher?
2. Why would it surprise you that anyone would criticise a method of doing something? If that method is demonstrably damaging (see the longitudinal research on RR here: https://www.cresp.udel.edu/research-project/efficacy-follow-study-long-term-effects-reading-recovery-i3-scale/) and based on a false idea about literacy acquisition (https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading), then criticism is needed.
3. I’m glad you mentioned the brain. Are you familiar with the terms ‘orthographic mapping’ and the principles of cognitive load theory? If not, then we can’t really talk much further about the brain until you come up to speed on the latest findings of cognitive science as it relates to literacy.
4. I have read Clay extensively, thank you.
I agree that sounded like a very bad lesson and it wasn’t led by the child’s interest.
I don’t think Reading recovery asks you to tell the story before the story is read.
You usually have five minutes before attention drops , so you have to keep pace.
I think that was very poor. Using reading recovery ideas very badly
You have to put the onus on the teacher finding out how the child is attempting to read.
OBSERVATION is a priority linking in to their thought processes.
Letter sound recognition must be sound
Asking the child to point to each letter , have a chuckle between you about the fact that, that letter had seemed to disappear.
Playing with his observations on similar words
Using the opportunity to let the child want to read and know he can develop his own strategises , ones that work for him.
The teacher had a total misunderstanding of how to use the reading recovery method to help while teaching reading.
If this is a common problem for teachers using reading recovery to teach reading then I can understand your misgivings
Making sure the teachers have the understood before they use it on children may be the way to go.
But here’s the thing, Mary: It was a textbook perfect Reading Recovery lesson. The teacher was highly trained and did everything by the book. The problem was neither her skill nor her fidelity to the program.
Finding out ‘how the child is attempting to read’ is an unproductive waste of instructional time. Show the child what to do in order to decode, orthographically map, and gain fluency. Teach first. Ask questions later. Reading Recovery is EXACTLY the other way round.
If you give a child with low PA and a difficulty with processing print the opportunity to develop ‘strategies’ that circumvent the necessary development of PA ad GPC knowledge, they will take anything else (i.e. guessing) to try to end that struggle. They will build inefficient systems of word-storage that will not lead to transfer when encountering unfamiliar words. Please see the work of Linnea Ehri and David Share on orthographic mapping and phonological recoding.
This teacher misunderstood nothing except the hard facts about how children build an autonomous orthographic lexicon. This is down to the content within Reading Recovery training.
She was not adequately trained nor did she implement the lesson appropriately – as you described. As an elementary principal who worked with and observed many reading recovery teachers over two decades in three different schools, this lesson would not have happened had the teacher been trained adequately. I’m sorry you’re doing a disservice to the profession and the very serious issue of literacy in our country.
You’re right there, Sandra. She was very far from adequately trained because her training was Reading Recovery. Very far from adequate.
But since you cling to this execrable methodology, let me ask you three questions:
1. What is orthographic mapping?
2. Why don’t private reading tutors, whose livelihoods depend on the success of their students, use Reading Recovery if it’s so fabulous?
3. Two decades in three different schools: In that time, did you ever encounter a person who was RR trained, then received some training in structured literacy and moved away from RR altogether?
Also, please see this article by my colleague, Professor Pamela Snow, on related issues. I’d be interested to know what you think:
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2024/03/help-my-literacy-lead-has-said-we-have.html
Thank you for this article. I whole heartily agree. My experience with Reading Recovery was with a teacher, who unlike your friend, was not a good reading teacher, but a very good salesperson to administration. As a first grade classroom teacher I kept careful record of my students, and charted their progress. After 6+ wasted months of Reading Recovery, the 2 students who received this intervention were far behind my other students in acquiring all literacy skills. Several of those students whose progress surpassed the RR students had severe, diagnosed, learning disabilities. I found that this program not only moved at a snail’s pace, but did little to help students become independent readers.
Yes I’m afraid it’s true, Patricia. The devastation that RR has wrought over the years compelled me to write this.
Hi Lyn, I am a parent of a daughter with dyslexia, dyscalculia, disorder of written expression and AHDH and am a founding member of Decoding Dyslexia Ontario. I have been following you for many years.
I am disappointed to read the comments from Una regarding Reading Recovery and OISE.
In February 2022 the Ontario Human Rights Commission released a report on their Right to Read Inquiry they started on October 2019. The report has 157 recommendations for Ontario school boards ad schools. OISE is very aware of the report and its recommendations. Unfortunately there has been pushback from some people at OISE.
On page 278 of the R2R Inquiry report is stated “Some of the most widely used interventions reported by the inquiry school boards are not shown to be effective for any tiers within RTI/MTSS. For example, there is little to no scientific evidence supporting Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) or Reading Recovery®.”
Many school boards in Ontario are resisting implementing the recommendations which will hurt students in Ontario with dyslexia and reading disabilities.
This is a link to the full report, which would be beneficial for Una and other teachers in Ontario to read.
https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/right-to-read-inquiry-report/introduction
Thanks Lyn for everything you do to help people receive the appropriate reading instruction.
Thanks for sharing that, Janice, and good luck to Ontario!
Excellent article and spot on with my experience. As a reading specialist working with children identified with dyslexia, it is unsettling to note that a majority of them (during my time in public education) had RR and LLI listed in their historical data/Intervention histories only to later be diagnosed with a reading disability. Several years ago as a curriculum specialist for a campus, my principal had me track students that completed RR to see what became of them. The findings were quite sad…most of them were diagnosed with reading disabilities and served under special education and Section 504. When I shared my findings with the principal, he planned to share the results district wide and later decided against it because of the stronghold of RR educators in the district.
Thank you for sharing this, Kris. It’s an all too common tale, but one that I hope is coming to an end.
I disagree. Many children are diagnosed with reading disabilities who simply have not been taught to read. Because children struggle post RR or LlI does not negate the gains made. Continued support for struggling readers is critical. Until children have reached a level of independence – probably post third grade.
Really? That’s your experience is it? Who has been doing that? Registered psychologists? Speech-language therapists? Who? You should report them for misdiagnosis.
Support for children who have encountered RR or LLI is critical because of the damage these approaches do. We see them day in, day out in our practice.
How unfortunate this reviewer bases her review on one lesson she observed over ten years ago and some she watched on You Tube. As others here have suggested – attend a session of “behind the glass”, discuss the assessment protocol, observe a teacher training session, listen to how and why reading lessons are constructed as they are, listen for how each lesson is tailored to each student, and discuss the in- depth analysis a reading recovery teacher constantly uses to guide instruction.
One of the key aspects of Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery is fidelity to the program and the training of each teacher. What was the training of this “friend” she observed? Had this person been trained as Marie Clay intended, this lesson as described would not have happened. The description indicates this teacher was not properly trained, did not understand the nuances of the strategies, and did not implement appropriately. I too would have been aghast to watch this torturous lesson.
The author states “teaching people to read is no big deal”. Wow! If this was the case, why are so many children from inner city, minority-based, and poverty stricken having difficulties with a basic right?
Reading is a complex process. No single approach is the panacea. Yes, we did neglect teaching children systematic phonics for too long. Reading Recovery as intended is an effective intervention. To base a review on one lesson observed ten years ago implemented by an uncertain professional holds no credibility and adds nothing to a serious issue to ensure all children learn to read as first graders and continue to develop as a reader in subsequent years.
The most unfortunate aspect of this review is to bash a significant advance in helping children to read successfully while ignoring what the program does provide. Teaching reading is complex and we can do better – but – by denigrating valiant efforts – rather by rigorously studying effective efforts and figuring out how they complement each other.
Hi Sandra, maybe look up the definition of ‘review’. I’ll help:
“a critical appraisal”
Yes I was reviewing that lesson. I looked on YouTube for other lessons and can very confidently say that what I watched was standard Reading Recovery. Did you watch the YouTube lesson I linked to or not? Again, another standard lesson.
You ask: ‘What was the training of this “friend”…?’
I ask: Did you read the article? Did you actually read it for comprehension? What trouble did you have with making meaning out of this paragraph:
” It was quite evident that my friend had spent many hours practising the elements in the lesson. She was no rookie. She delivered clear and precise instructions with confidence and ease. Her pacing was flawless, her manner was perfect, her equipment was organized and on hand and she really did come across as a seasoned professional. ”
How dare you denigrate this teacher in defence of your cult.
You say: ‘…why are so many children from inner city, minority-based, and poverty stricken having difficulties with a basic right?’
I say: You really don’t know, do you? You are that blinded by whole language and Marie Clay worship that you can’t see the damage wrought by those educational philosophies.
You say: ‘Yes, we did neglect teaching children systematic phonics for too long.’
I say: You did. I didn’t. People who opposed RR and balanced literacy didn’t. You did. And why? For what? Phonics is not new knowledge. It was just hidden, denigrated, bashed and ignored by influential people who knew better but preferred power and profit.
There is nothing valiant about clinging to Reading Recovery. Nothing.