Analyzing Student Progress in Reading Recovery: Guiding Questions and Next Steps

I have found that developing a system for looking across multiple running records, as well as lesson records, to be a vital process necessary for consistent progress that leads to acceleration. When I make time to look for patterns of behavior across lessons, rather than only looking day by day, I feel like I know …

First Round Reflection: When Learning Letters is Difficult

I wanted to use this post as an opportunity to share about one of my most challenging rounds of Reading Recovery. All four of my students entered with mostly stanines of 1 for each task on the Observation Survey and very low raw scores. My students required various types of support to help with significant …

Working on Phrasing in Earlier Levels

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Dr. James Schnug present at the Literacy for All Conference on the topic of phrasing. If you would like to read more about this topic, Schnug wrote about his research in an article called Paying More Attention to Phrasing in Fluent Reading in the Fall …

2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning Part 2

At the beginning of my 2nd round of Reading Recovery I wrote a post about participating in a LitCon session, The Quest for Accelerated Gains in Writing, presented by Mary Fried, reflecting on my own practices during the writing part of my Reading Recovery lessons, and my desire to do some action research centered around …

2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in various sessions through the on-line LitCon 2022 Conference last January-February. One particular session entitled, The Quest for Accelerated Gains in Writing, provided by Mary Fried had me looking at and reflecting on my own practices during the writing part of my Reading Recovery lessons. Mary defined high-impact teachers and discussed …

Join Us at LitCon22!

We are very excited to be live featured speakers at this year’s all virtual LitCon: National K-8 Literacy Conference on Thursday, February 3rd, 2022 with a live Continued Engagement follow-up session on Saturday, February 5th, 2022. Our session, Shifting Our Language for Strategic Processing will focus on recognizing the strategic actions that are indicative of …

Supporting Agency Through Teacher Language

Agency I recently read the book, Wire for Agency: Four Simple Moves That Transfer Learning, by Jenn Hayhurst and Jill DeRosa. If you are interested in shifting your teaching to increase students' independence, then this is a must-read. This text walks educators through four important moves to support student agency: Watch, Intend, Reflect, and Engage. …

Returning to Reading Recovery

Many of you know that I spent the last school year teaching kindergarten instead of Reading Recovery. While I missed Reading Recovery, I tried to stay positive and use my Reading Recovery knowledge to support my students' learning in the classroom. Leaving Reading Recovery to go back to the classroom was not new to me. …

Lessons Learned: Reflections on a Remarkable Year

When staring into a pool of still, clear water, the reflected image is sharp, almost perfect. When the water is disturbed, the reflection is still there, but it is distorted, no longer a perfect copy. Our water has been disturbed. For some of us, in the most violent way. Our year has resembled past school …

Rethinking Levels 1 & 2

Are we keeping students in levels 1 and 2 for too long? Our Reading Recovery Teacher Leader had us mull over this question during a Reading Recovery professional development session. I am still reflecting on this question. The majority of my incoming Reading Recovery students start in levels 0-1. I know that I need to …