Reading Recovery teachers’ roles in schools are changing. We are expanding the role to include school planning involvement for wide and rich literacy programmes, and small group co-teaching in classrooms co-planned with classroom teachers based on advice from whānau.
In this three-tiered approach, teachers transfer skills learned in Reading Recovery teaching to different contexts, making purposeful decisions using a repertoire of approaches to tailor learning for children.
As we engage in these new ways of working, we are also encountering new challenges and new questions. Here is one that a teacher recently asked, which others might also be asking around the country:
I am interested to learn about the "and + and" approach and how this will impact the Reading Recovery lessons.
This question has been vexing literacy researchers all over the world for many years: how can we make sure there is enough attention to the skills of reading and writing, while also building engagement, literate identity, comprehension, and writing?
Implementing an AND + AND approach
Our approach is to reject a binary or oppositional approach, and so, we are implementing an AND + AND approach. In Aotearoa, we are using the expertise of phonics AND the expertise of Reading Recovery.
It's a 3-tiered approach, based in the first year of school – with phonics sitting strongly in Tier 1 in the first months of school. Teachers will then work together at Tier 2 with small groups if children need extra support after six months. If children are not underway with literacy after a year, teachers will build on Reading Recovery from there.
Here's my take on where we are at:
- A high-quality literacy programme will include alphabetics (phonics and phonemic awareness), fluency, comprehension, and writing activities, using engaging texts to increase skills in reading and writing. These are aspects that are evident in every Reading Recovery lesson which are also applicable for Early Literacy Support.
- Reading Recovery teacher training is highly valued by school leaders as teachers develop expertise in close observation and decision-making led by their knowledge of the child. The year of professional learning produces well-trained teachers who can make expert teaching decisions. The intensive professional learning in the training process allows teachers to transfer this expertise once it’s acquired.
- Literacy development patterns are bi-directional. Phonics helps reading and writing. Reading and writing help each other, AND reading and writing teach phonics knowledge.
- Both implicit AND explicit teaching approaches are necessary. Children learn to read by reading AND by being taught explicitly.
- Engagement in stories and authentic texts is important for comprehension, language development and non-cognitive outcomes, including motivation, engagement, self-efficacy, and literate identity. Decodable texts offer opportunity to practice taught skills, but not enough opportunity to meet common spelling patterns or the language structures and vocabulary of English. So, both decodable texts and guided reading are possibilities.
- Oral languages underpin all literate activity.
- Talking, composing stories, and reading stories are the end goal.
A new Reading Recovery Teacher landscape
It's an exciting time to be a Reading Recovery teacher. All over the country, trained Reading Recovery teachers are working hard to find the optimal balance between implicit and explicit instruction and between instructional (decodable texts) and guided reading (with natural language texts), depending on the child with the child’s competencies leading their decision-making.
Experienced Reading Recovery teachers and tutors are reporting that it is possible to use their teaching expertise to tailor lessons for the children at hand, while maintaining accelerated pace.
- Familiar reading continues to be powerful for fluent reading with appropriate phrasing, which is both a prerequisite for comprehension AND an outcome of comprehension.
- The art of close observation is developed through formative assessment tools (e.g. Running Records) , adjusting your lessons and finding the right mix for the child.
- Working with magnetic letters is an opportunity to explicitly focus on looking, moving into the alphabet principle and left to right analysis of a word, and word study, which needs to be quick and focused.
- The explicit instruction on segmentation builds phonemic awareness, which can be tied to looking, listening and self-monitoring in writing and reading.
- Self-monitoring is a core skill, required for future comprehension monitoring.
- Book introductions aid in reading comprehension.
- Time spent reading and amount of text read are important for learning at pace. Too much time spent for explicit teaching slows the pace, or restricts access to reading, such that students don't make gains i.e., they don't learn enough, fast enough. The students' gains in literacy are the evidence of effective instruction.
The AND + AND approach is retaining what works well AND adding new tools to the mix. The AND + AND approach in Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support covers:
- Skills AND comprehension
- Knowledge AND strategies
- Reading AND writing AND oral language
- Planning AND responsiveness
- Skills for reading AND real reading
- Skills for writing AND real writing
To learn more, visit the Reading Recovery website.
