Roos – reading recovery program

We’ve been looking at a program, which is offered in some schools. It’s called ‘Reading Recovery’ where children are diagnosed by their teachers when they enter, typically, grade one, are they reading at grade level or not? And if these kids are not, and the school has the resources then Reading Recovery is one program which is offered where, I think it’s at least a couple of times a week there is a Reading Recovery teacher who is trained in these techniques and offers children selected for this program, intensive one-on-one or one in a very small group, reading enrichment programs.  

These children are tested before they come in the program and at the end of the year to see what their reading scores look like. And it’s very interesting because we look at the children who have these risk characteristics and coming into the program whether they’re from no risk backgrounds or high risk backgrounds, teachers are selecting these kids because they can’t read. So, clearly they’re all starting out very low. At the end of the year, they also look almost identical. Their grades come up, not quite as much in the very highest risk kids but they’re basically reading at grade level by the end of the year. It’s a very encouraging story, it suggests these kids can recover without question. 

Does this mean they’re going to go and sail through high school? Not likely. They’re going to continue to need support but they clearly can recover.  

One of the questions, which we’re continually asked, is who are the kids who succeed despite being at risk and this is one of the most sort of challenging questions to answer. The one area I mentioned, we’ve looked at Reading Recovery so we know these kids have the potential for recovering. We’re starting to work – there are several initiatives which are ongoing in Winnipeg now. In fact the Manitoba Centre is applying for a major grant working with a whole variety of initiatives: everything from intensive breastfeeding, to schools which are doing innovative things; various programs trying to see if we can use the kind of data we have on the population going back and look pre- and post-program as to how much difference it makes. I think there are many exciting things which are going on now – summer enrichment programs, trying to keep kids in school, but we don’t specifically have data on many of these yet although coming soon, I hope.