What is Reading Recovery?Reading Recovery was developed by New Zealander Marie Clay. It is a 12- to 20-week accelerated programme designed to move struggling first grade readers up from the bottom of their class. At the end of the programme children develop a self-extending system that uses a variety of strategies to read increasingly difficult text and to independently write on their own. It involves one-on-one tutoring, five days per week, 30 minutes a day, by a specially-trained teacher. Reading Recovery uses supportive conversations between teacher and child as the primary basis of instruction. At what schools is Reading Recovery available in Bermuda?We had Reading Recovery in all government and primary schools. We previously had it at Bermuda Institute, the Bermuda High School for Girls, Mount Saint Agnes and Somersfield Academy. But not this year. This year, the private schools do not have Reading Recovery.Why is that?There is the option for them to have it. A decision was made by government not to offer it this year. Government primarily wanted the training for the teachers in the government schools. They can apply to be involved in the implementation.It seems a bit unfair to say this is the only system that really works, but you can't access it if your child goes to a private school.If your child is in the private school and having reading difficulties, and not able to access Reading Recovery, it might be better to pull them out quickly, put them somewhere where they can access it even if you put them back in the private school again later. You only have a small window of time to catch them up between primary one and primary three. After that you are dealing with much more complexity and those helping them need to be that much more qualified.What's special about the Reading Recovery training?Reading Recovery training is rigorous and ongoing. Among other things, the training requires teachers to be astute observers of children's behaviour. They can't follow a script that says today I am going to do this and tomorrow I will do that. They have to observe children's behaviours, know how to interpret them and apply what we would call problem solving strategies. What this child may be struggling with, another child may need something different. For the last two years we have been looking very closely at how we are working with our boys.I know a lot of teachers and parents struggle to get their boys to read.Boys definitely present additional challenges. Some boys, have motivational challenges and fluency challenges. Certainly, they do not sit for long periods of time without being very actively engaged in text. The books and texts we select for them is very important. I have found that girls will want to dramatise text more than boys. Boys will want to read more closely in their head and then talk about it afterward. You still want to hear them read orally but what you really want to know for sure is that they are able to decode or problem solve as quickly as you would for girls, but I am not going to insist that they use as much drama. So we are actively looking at behaviours and thinking about how we are selecting for them.Richard Allington, a speaker at your reading conference in March, was very outspoken about the fact that the Reading Clinic uses the Orton Gillingham approach. (Orton Gillingham is an intensive, sequential phonics-based system that teaches the basics of word formation before whole meanings. The method accommodates and utilises the three learning modalities, or pathways, through which people learn visual, auditory and kinesthetic.)What Works Clearing House, a huge United States-based research centre, has looked at all the different reading programmes on offer and found the only one that really works is Reading Recovery. I trained in Orton Gillingham, and I used the approach for several years. I had students who were good decoders and spellers, but I didn't have children who were readers. It wasn't until I went to New Zealand that I was able to look at a much broader aspect and I was able to look at building my knowledge of books. I learned about the role that oral language plays. We looked very closely at the rules of the English language. The Reading Clinic has done well financially, but I don't think people realise that it only offers the Orton Gillingham approach. It is the difference between accelerating reading growth, or just plodding along year after year. With Reading Recovery we have taken a child from non-reader to a reader of books within 60 hours. That is a huge difference.Would you like to see the Reading Clinic give up the Orton Gillingham and switch to Reading Recovery?No, the idea would be to have a merging. What I feel Orton Gillingham is extremely useful for is teachers to have in terms of how the English language is structured. Unfortunately, the rules of the English language only work 50 percent of the time. You can't just walk into a classroom and only teach letter sounds or rules and say that qualifies me as a reading teacher. It is simply background information. The best training for any teacher who wants to be a teacher of reading is to have a bit of that, but to have a lot more training in knowing how to give access. They need to know children's books, and they also need to know how to teach the rules in continuous text and writing.What changes would you like to see for the Bermuda Reading Association?I want us to expand to become an organisation offering professional development for teachers of reading, and a resource for parents who are asking questions like, what kinds of books should I read to my children, or they have questions about their child's reading development. I want to have workshops and presentations throughout the year, rather than once or twice a year. I would like to see the Bermuda Reading Association become more of a professional organisation. A place where parents and teachers can go to with their concerns.For more information about the Bermuda Reading Association telephone 535-8035 or e-mail info[AT]bermudareading.org.Useful website: www.bermudareading.org.