Reading Recovery Support at Home

You can help your child's progress in Reading Recovery.

Show an interest in your child’s reading, and encourage him to read books brought home each day after Reading Recovery lessons. 
Spending a few minutes reading with your child each day will make a big difference! After beginning Reading Recovery lessons, your child will bring home a few books each day. These will be books that are easy for your child to read so he can share success with you.

It is helpful for your child to read a book more than once because, as Reading Recovery's founder Marie Clay notes, "rereading familiar books encourages confidence and fluency and provides practice in bringing reading behaviors together ... (and) allows the reader to discover new things about the print during the rereading."

The most important thing you can do is to be pleased that your child is interested in reading. This should be a shared, happy time together. It is not a test, and it shouldn’t feel like hard work for your child. If he is stuck on a word say, “try to work it out,” then silently count to three. Then if he hasn't worked it out, tell him the word and keep the story reading going smoothly. Try to spend 10 or 15 minutes a day, but if this is too long for your child, try 5-minute reads two or three times a day. Don’t make it a chore.

Make sure your child is in school every day if possible and doesn’t miss any Reading Recovery lessons. 
Children progress faster if they attend school every day and receive a daily Reading Recovery lesson. They can practice the skills they are learning and build confidence from lesson to lesson.

Watch one of your child’s Reading Recovery lessons at school.
Watching your child’s Reading Recovery lesson will be great for you and your child! Your child can see you taking an active interest in learning and can show you just how hard he is working. You can see the progress, how the teacher helps your child, and what you can do to help, also.

Help your child assemble the sentence puzzle. 
Reading Recovery teacher and child with cutup storyEach day your child will bring home an envelope with a “cut-up story.” This is a sentence or two that he has written in the lesson and the teacher has copied onto a strip of cardstock. The teacher will have cut the sentence into individual words or groups of letters for your child to reassemble.

This will only take a few minutes, so:

  • First help your child read the sentence(s) on the envelope.

  • Then cover the envelope and let your child make the sentence out of the words. If he/she forgets the sentence, provide a reminder; it’s not cheating to help.

  • Ask your child to read the assembled story to see that it makes sense and looks right.

Putting the sentence back together will help your child link what he is learning to do in writing with what he is learning to do in reading.

Content adapted with permission from Institute of Education, University of London

Reference
Clay, M.M. (2005). Literacy lessons designed for individuals part two: Teaching procedures (p. 98). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.


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