Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery New Zealand is an early intervention programme aimed at six-year-old children and designed to reduce the number of children with literacy difficulties in schools. Reading Recovery provides daily one-to-one teaching with a specially trained teacher for children making the slowest progress in literacy learning after a year at school. It is supplementary to classroom instruction. Details of ways to access Reading Recovery are outlined in the system of support. 

Reading Recovery has two major intended outcomes:

• To accelerate learners’ reading and writing achievement to the average level of their peers, so that they can learn effectively in the classroom without further additional support.
• To identify early in their schooling the small proportion of learners who need ongoing and specialist literacy support. 

Reading Recovery provides a period of intensive, daily one-to-one literacy instruction, delivered by a trained Reading Recovery teacher for a period of between 12–20 weeks.

Enhanced support for early literacy

Following the evaluation of Reading Recovery in 2020, we are enhancing Reading Recovery. Now known as Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support, the programme provides a three-tier approach to supporting early literacy in schools that will enable a broader range of children to access literacy support.

·      Tier 1 – Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support teachers will be available to support class teachers with providing effective early literacy approaches to all learners, as well as contributing to the school-wide literacy strategy.

·      Tier 2 – targeted group support for learners alongside peers supporting children who are not progressing in their literacy learning after their first term at school.

·      Tier 3 – 1:1 Reading Recovery will support children still not progressing after a year at school until they are able to continue learning alongside their peers.