We have made some exciting changes to our approach in supporting schools as part of the Reading Recovery Refresh. The role of Reading Recovery teachers in schools has expanded to provide Early Literacy Support across three tiers. Our main goal is to transfer teacher knowledge to different situations, allowing Reading Recovery teachers to collaborate with classroom teachers and families. Together, they co-plan and co-teach a series of tailored lessons for children who need extra support in literacy.
The three-tiered approach of Early Literacy Support is a change for the implementation in Aotearoa New Zealand. But in some ways, many things are similar: The approach relies on the teacher expertise of tailoring support to the people we are working with, and critically analysing our practice together using evidence of change. These are the skills developed by teachers through Reading Recovery that can transfer to class teaching. We call it instructional strength, a mixture of strong planning, in the moment responding, and the disposition to see strengths in every child and to support the child to use their strengths to their best advantage.
The questions I’m getting from media suggest to me that people are wondering what this transfer of expertise and Early Literacy Support will look like in practice. Below are questions I have been asked and my answers which I hope you find helpful.
Q: I’d like to ask you if you think it’s effective for student learning to mix use of the Better Start Literacy Approach/Phonics Plus books and Tier 3 Reading Recovery lessons in this new approach?
We think it has huge potential. By way of clarification:
- There are a number of classroom programmes that offer structured ways of making sure that all children get introduced to the skills they need. In whole class programmes, teachers will be including structured literacy approaches within their work.
- Reading Recovery is a short term intervention for those children who find reading and writing challenging to learn. If the whole-of-class approaches to teaching literacy are not effective for a student, they will be referred to Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support for more intensive reading and writing support.
If the whole class approach isn’t successful for particular children, classroom teachers and Reading Recovery teachers can work together, using advice from families and assessments to design the Early Literacy Support lessons for small groups.
If a child still needs extra support, they can work 1 on 1 with a Reading Recovery teacher.
The benefit of drawing from evidence in many approaches is the focus on teacher knowledge and adaptive expertise. Drawing from multiple knowledge systems means that teachers have access to a wider repertoire, so that they can design the lessons for the children they are working with, depending on what those children already know and do.
The mixing of approaches is about teachers collaborating and putting their heads together for the benefit of the children.
Q: In terms of using both approaches, are Phonics Plus books used with lesson plans and resources that accompany these books by Reading Recovery teachers or are Reading Recovery teachers using Reading Recovery lessons that include strategies to guess as words based on meaning cues or based on illustration cues?
Guessing is not a fair representation of a Reading Recovery approach. Instead, we analyse what the child is noticing, and what they are neglecting. Visual information refers to the print, not the picture. Close analysis helps teachers analyse what aspects of the print the child has noticed, and what they have neglected. Moreover, accessing the meaning is a critical part of understanding what is happening at the story level. And students also need word and sub word level knowledge to bring to solving words they do not know.
Both aspects are important in reading, in all approaches.
What you ask about is the mix of decodable and natural language texts. This is about designing lessons for the children we teach. Teachers need knowledge to select the most appropriate texts to use at a particular time for a particular purpose. Sometimes decodable texts will be appropriate because the student will benefit from practicing taught decoding skills, at other times they will work to develop their language and comprehension by reading stories that are engaging and make sense to them, and their worlds.
Ultimately children need to learn how to read natural language texts and they won’t learn this if they never get the opportunity to read them. Natural language texts present different types of challenges that children need to learn to address.
Here again, the issue at hand is teacher knowledge - i.e. teachers having knowledge of the decodable texts and lesson plans from these resources, and the knowledge of natural language texts and teaching that supports those texts.
What we want to reinforce is that one size does not fit all. Three tiers of literacy support – from whole class, small group and one to one and a range of literacy approaches are needed to ensure that we can build confident and successful readers across all our tamariki.
What we do know, through having engaged with this research and development work over the last two years, is that every school is facing a slightly different context and serving different communities. We know that teachers need to be able to work together, to keep their eye on all the outcomes that are important for reading and writing.
The Reading Recovery teacher plays an important role as a literacy expert in a school, working alongside classroom teachers with different strategies, should children continue to struggle under a structured whole class approach.
Q: Is a Tier 3 intervention based on Reading Recovery publications?
Yes. And we are adding new literature and resources to the training. My job has been to review the literature on phonics, and tease out where the structured and balanced literacy approaches align, and where they are different, and to make sure teachers understand those, using evidence from the Science of Reading literature and also the literature on reading comprehension, writing, vocabulary, reading fluency, and self-regulation.
Q: What research have you undertaken on this new mixed approach?
We are carefully tracking the results of the new ways of working and reporting these to the Ministry of Education. We are tracking the results in terms of the Phonics + levels, the book levels, word knowledge, word writing and alphabet knowledge. We are analysing teachers’ planning and their outcome data to figure out what’s working and where we need to refine. We hold Zoom meetings each term to share with our teachers what we are learning, and thinking about refinements we need to make. The results of these two years show that through teacher collaboration we can overcome the perception of a competitive model between structured and balanced literacy approaches, and work together for the benefit of children.
Q: How would you describe the two literacy approaches?
I would describe the two-approach discourse as a false binary. There is nothing to suggest that schools have to make a choice between two opposite positions. In fact, successive international evaluations of literacy approaches have found that the difference between structured and balanced literacy approaches is the quality of the teacher within the approach. Phonics is a necessary part. So are fluency, language development, comprehension and writing (and more). No one thing by itself is going to be sufficient. It will always be a combination of approaches.
Q: What training do Reading Recovery teachers receive for using Phonics Plus books and who provides this training?
We have shifted our internal organisation to a model of working groups-Te Ohu, with Reading Recovery Tutors leading this out within the team. We’ve had a national workshops led by our Te Ohu Groups, who are working closely with our Early Literacy Support teachers trialing the combined approaches.
Each of the Tutors around the country has engaged in Professional Learning about the new texts, instructional reading and the theory behind the new texts.
Q: Has this new model been developed to align with the Common Practice Model currently under development?
We developed it through ongoing consultation and hui over 2021- 2022, working with teachers, and school leaders and refining the approach. That said, when we look at what is emerging from the Common Practice Model, I think it completely aligns.
Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support aligns with all of the key pedagogies, including explicit teaching approaches.
Q: Do you hope this approach will continue to be funded when the Common Practice Model is in place?
The question that should be asked is, if Reading Recovery were NOT in place, what evidence-based intervention would we have to support our most vulnerable readers? As a country, we need to cease the oppositional approach.
We will still need something in place for children who do not get underway well in literacy. And we are still going to need literacy experts in schools who can work with children to make sure they get a good start.
There is a need to avoid conflating Reading Recovery (as an intervention for children that are facing challenges with getting started in their literacy) with Structured Literacy (which is an approach to teaching literacy). It is comparing apples to oranges.
Even with the roll out of structured approaches, there are still readers who need something extra. Supporting them is the role that Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support plays.
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