Providing Effective Schooling for Students at Risk

Marie Clay

The Reading Recovery program is explained first by the narrator of the videotape and then by Marie Clay, founder of the Reading Recovery program. Excerpted from the videotape Collaborations in Education: Reading Recovery (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1994).

"Reading recovery helps children by providing individualized instruction in reading and writing, early in their school careers, before they experience failure. In thirty minutes of daily one on one instruction, teachers help at risk readers learn the strategies that good readers use.

"What we aim to do is not teach the child words, letters, sounds, what I call items of knowledge, what we try to do is teach the child how to work on print. Whether they're looking at problem solving and reading or writing a message down in their story that what they have to do is say, 'well this is what I need to do' or 'this is what I want to do, how do I work on it?' and the teacher's task is to help them to have the strategies to work on print."

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Mary Ann Costello, a free-lance writer, based on an outline and comments submitted by John H. Hollifield, associate director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR), and Lynn Stinnette, director of Center for School and Community Development at the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Date posted: 1996