acceleration: the key to reading recovery benefits

When Reading Recovery first came toa school system in our region, animpressive-looking 6-year-old namedAdam unwittingly became our firstambassador. Adam had driven hiskindergarten teachers to distractionthrough misbehavior, stubbornness,and lack of learning progress. Were itnot for the prospect of ReadingRecovery (and perhaps his height),Adam would have been retained inkindergarten. But as he progressed inReading Recovery, Adam’s behaviorchanged dramatically. He discoveredthat he could read and write; he dis-covered he could learn and that heliked to learn; and he discovered thathe loved to read. He carried bookseverywhere and was glad of an excuseto read to anyone. When administra-tors came to visit, they were delightedto listen to this bright-eyed, eageryoung lad reading stories he enjoyed;they would also hear from his teachersabout the dramatic change in his

learning progress and his personality.Adam indeed played a very importantpart in opening the administrators’eyes to what Reading Recovery cando.

Reading Recovery has been full of sur-prises like Adam (Clay, 1991). It hasproduced amazing changes in literacydevelopment and even in schooladjustment of hundreds of thousandsof young children who struggle withthe challenges of learning to read andwrite. Key to the dramatic improve-ment that Reading Recovery childrentypically make is actually changing the paths of learning progress theyexhibit—that is, intervening power-fully, child by child, to transform apattern of very slow progress into alearning progress more rapid thanmany of their peers, thus catchingthem up to their classmates. This ability to accelerate the learning of the majority of children served is what

makes Reading Recovery not only anextremely valuable program, but alsoan economical one.

Acceleration is at the heart of what wedo in Reading Recovery: enablingchildren to actually move faster in literacy development in order to catchup with their peers. But, ReadingRecovery’s capacity to produce acceler-ated learning is not always well under-stood and appreciated, thus making itdifficult to see the difference betweenacceleration and remediation and thecritical importance of teaching one-to-one with intensively trained teachers.Even people who see and appreciateaccelerative teaching do not alwaysunderstand why it is successful. Somethink it is the teaching proceduresalone that account for ReadingRecovery’s results. Perhaps this is thereason that many have sought to replicate those results by introducingReading Recovery procedures intoclassrooms or small groups. Still others have ascribed the impressivelearning gains of Reading Recoverychildren to the one-to-one nature ofthe tutoring and have suggested usingparaprofessionals or volunteers withthese children to increase numbersserved. Neither the teaching proce-dures or the one-to-one tutoring aloneexplain the accelerative learning gains

Fall 2002 Journal of Reading Recovery 1

Teaching

Acceleration: The Key to ReadingRecovery BenefitsNoel K. Jones, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

All Reading Recovery professionals teachchildren as part of their professionalrequirements. Here, author Noel Jonesworks with one of his 2002 students tohelp him achieve the accelerated learn-ing necessary in order to catch up withhis peers.

that the majority of Reading Recoverychildren achieve and that teachersexpect each child to make while in theprogram.

The concept of acceleration and itsimplications are essential to a fullunderstanding of Reading Recovery asa system of intervention and preven-tion to reduce learning difficulties inschool systems. Accelerated learningunderlies the difference betweenReading Recovery and remedial pro-grams, and it is an important part ofthe explanation for both short-termand longer-term performance of chil-dren served by Reading Recovery.Acceleration is important in compre-hending Reading Recovery’s design,standards, and procedures and therationales for this design. Accelerationalso helps to explain the economy ofReading Recovery when its costs arebalanced against its benefits.

In this article, I will explore the con-cept of acceleration from four per-spectives. First, I will describe acceler-ation in terms of learning perform-ance and illustrate it through analo-

gies. Second, I will discuss teachingand implementation factors that seemto account for acceleration. Third, I will make a beginning attempt toexplain acceleration as a learning phenomenon. Finally, I will exploreimplications of accelerated learning in terms of the economic and socialbenefits to learners, schools, andschool systems. By sharing these ideas,my hope is that as Reading Recoveryprofessionals, we can better communi-cate to others what makes ReadingRecovery a unique and powerful liter-acy intervention.

What Acceleration Looks LikeAcceleration means that a child learnsat a faster rate than many of the chil-dren within the grade and age cohort.Acceleration is a catching-up process;however, for reasons that will be pre-sented and discussed later, accelerationalso appears to be a limited-time phe-nomenon—something that reflects achange in learning processes, in thiscase related to literacy acquisition.Children entering Reading Recoveryare first-grade children who are on a

trajectory of progress predictive ofreading failure. They are not learningto read and write within the classroomcontext, or they are learning so slowlythat they are significantly behind theirage-mates and appear incapable ofperforming according to grade-leveland age-level expectations. As acceler-ation occurs, these children begin toparticipate in classroom learning activities; if grouping is used, they areoften moved from low-performinggroups to higher-performing groupswithin the class.

Acceleration has been compared to arace in which runners start in differ-ent positions, with some already wellahead, a large group clustered in thecenter, and several runners at variousdistances well behind the rest. In thisuseful but imperfect comparison,acceleration occurs as most of those at the back begin to gain ground onthose at the center of the pack untilthey have caught up and maintainthat pace.

Signs of acceleration are usually seenduring Reading Recovery lessonsbefore they begin to appear in theclassroom. The child begins to showthe Reading Recovery teacher newthings that have been learned in theclassroom or in other contexts. Thechild needs fewer reviews and repeti-tions in order to acquire new words inreading and in writing. Self-regulationand self-confidence are noticeablyenhanced. The child initiates moresearching behavior independently and shows determination to solveproblems in reading and in writingwithout teacher assistance. The childbegins to draw upon analogies and tocomment on relationships betweenwords seen in reading and in writing,between ideas and words in differentbooks, and among examples used in

Teaching

Journal of Reading Recovery Fall 20022

Reading Recovery teachers find it challenging to learn Guidebook procedures tohelp them teach in ways that result in accelerated learning.

the word study and other portions ofthe lesson.

The difference between accelerationand the slower, albeit steady, learningprogress that can occur during reme-diation can be understood by compar-ing Reading Recovery with the resultsof a published study describing a dif-ferent intervention (Morris, Tyner, &Perney, 2000). This intervention wasmodeled after Reading Recovery butdiffered in three important ways: itincluded a predetermined sequence ofphonics and word learning objectives,it involved less than one-fifth of thetime devoted to teacher training inReading Recovery, and it excludedsome low-performing children fromthe treatment. The stated purpose ofthe study was to show that resultscomparable to Reading Recovery canbe achieved with considerably lessteacher training and with the additionof a sequenced phonics and wordteaching curriculum. In the study, 22teachers taught 43 children individu-ally over the course of an entire year.As part of their teaching assignment,some taught four children daily, sometaught two children, and some (whowere classroom teachers) taught onlyone child per day. Results for thetreatment group were significantlybetter than for a control group. How-ever, at the end of the year, 32 ofthese 43 children (74%) were readingonly at a primer level, and just 11 of43 (26%) were reading at end-of-first-grade level or above. This progress ofless than a year’s growth from teachingover an entire year would have pro-

duced little change for most of thesechildren in their relative standingwithin their age and class group.

In comparison to Reading Recovery,several contrasts stand out:

• Reading Recovery’s interven-tion is of shorter duration—the majority of children learnat an accelerated rate for alimited amount of time,achieving more than a year’sgrowth (as measured on grad-uated text reading selections)in a period of 12 to 20 weeks;

• teachers are expected to serveat least two rounds of chil-dren per year—which meansthat in their half-time teach-ing position teaching fourchildren per day, ReadingRecovery teachers averagebetter than eight children per year;1

• Reading Recovery selects thelowest-performing children tobe served without exclusion;2

• in order to be considered suc-cessful (successfully discontin-ued from the program), chil-dren served in both first andsecond rounds are expected tobe reading at end-of-first-grade level or better by year’send. Reading at primer levelat the end of Grade 1 wouldnot be considered acceptableprogress.

The line graph on page 4 illustratesthe fact that first-round Reading

Recovery discontinued students actu-ally make up ground on their peers bymid-year. After they leave ReadingRecovery they continue to learn sothat they are at the same text readinglevel as average-progress students bythe end of the year. The dotted lineon the graph projects the progress of atheoretical group of children whobegin the year at a low level (like thesecond-round discontinued children)but never benefit from ReadingRecovery instruction. The differencebetween that projected text readinglevel at the end of the year and theachieved reading level of ReadingRecovery students who discontinue is8 to 10 text reading levels. This is theReading Recovery treatment effect.

The explanation on pages 4 and 5,contributed by Francisco Gómez-Bellengé, director of the NationalData Evaluation Center, presents adetailed explanation of the data,including a discussion of its limita-tions.

Not all Reading Recovery childrenachieve acceleration within the timeframes depicted. The children who donot accelerate fall into two categories:those who have had opportunity for afull 20 weeks of service and have beenrecommended for further assessmentand referral and those who have nothad sufficient time in the program(usually at the end of the year). Whatthe graph does illustrate, however, isthe necessity of dramatically changingthe trajectory of progress of the low-est-performing children to catch upwhen the achievement gap between


Teaching

1 A small minority of Reading Recovery teachers teach more than four children per day, and a very few receive one-year exemptionsto teach fewer than four per day.

2 Whether the number of children excluded from the Morris et al. study was sufficient to affect comparisons is not clear, because thedata are not reported. However, these exclusions reflect a difference in attitudes. The fact that children were deliberately omittedsuggests that the researchers did not believe these children could become successful learners. Reading Recovery takes the oppositeview: all children can become successful learners until a strong intervention suggests that something more may be needed.

0

5

10

15

20

25

Text

Rea

ding

Leve

l

FallScores

Mid-Year Scores

Year-End Scores

2001–2002 Acceleration in Reading RecoveryFrancisco Gómez-Bellengé, National Data Evaluation Center

Random Sample

1st Round/Discontinued

2nd Round/Discontinued

Low-Progress Group

GroupFall

ScoresMid-Year

ScoresYear-End

Scores

Random Sample (33,000)

1st Round Discontinued (37,000)

2nd Round Discontinued (20,000)

Low-Progress Group (projected)

5.2

0.7

1.2

1.2

Exit13.7

Entry5.3

5.3

20.8

19.5

18.5

Projected9.5

learners is the smallest it will ever be.(The gap will be smallest in the first-grade year. Just think how wide itbecomes by the end of Grades 3 or 4!)

Another benefit of the acceleratedlearning fostered by ReadingRecovery, which has not been repli-cated by other programs, is that thechildren who are judged successfully

discontinued (those who have acceler-ated their learning) are on their wayto acquiring a self-extending systemfor literacy learning so that theyimprove as readers and writers each

Teaching


Data from the National Data Evalu-ation Center provides a strong graph-ic representation of acceleration inReading Recovery. This chart tracksthe progress on text reading levelsfrom fall to spring for four groups of students during the 2001–2002school year. The first three groups areactual students, and the fourth group,the low-progress group, is projectedfrom the data.

Random Sample Group: Each yearthe National Data Evaluation Centercollects data for a random sample ofstudents in order to gauge the out-comes of Reading Recovery studentsagainst a reference group. During the2001–2002 year, about 33,000 firstgraders were in the random samplegroup. This group represents the top80–90% of readers. For the 2001–2002 school year, data for this groupwere collected in fall and spring, notat mid-year. In fall, their average textreading level was 5.2, and in spring itwas 20.8. In the graph, the solidblack line represents the progress ofthe random sample group.

First-Round Discontinued Students:Students served by Reading Recoveryin the first round of instruction arethe lowest readers in their class. Datain the blue line of the graph show theapproximately 37,000 first-roundReading Recovery students who

Source: National Data Evaluation Center

time they are meaningfully engaged inliteracy activities. Reading Recoveryteachers also develop a learning systemand improve their teaching as theygain more experience with Reading

Recovery children (whereas the Morriset al. study gives evidence suggestingthat the ability to train teachers didnot generalize to new groups whenthe original researcher was not

involved). This comparison suggeststhat self-regulation and a self-extend-ing system are related to acceleration,a point that will be discussed in thenext section.


Teaching

these children relative to the randomsample (average progress) groupoccurs between mid-year and year-end. This groups ends the year withinone text reading level of the first-round discontinued children and therandom sample (average progress)group. For these children, theReading Recovery treatment effect isdramatic because one can see whathappens to them both before andduring the intervention.

Low-Progress Group: Progress for atheoretical low-progress group can be projected from existing data.Children served in the second roundreceive no Reading Recovery treat-ment between fall and mid-year.Their progress curve can be plotted atthe same linear rate until year-end toproject what a group of low readerswould look like by the end of firstgrade if they did not receive ReadingRecovery services. Since 26% of allchildren who discontinued receivedanother form of literacy instructionbefore being served by ReadingRecovery, this low-progress grouprepresents likely progress of low readers who did not receive ReadingRecovery services but may havereceived some form of supplementaryliteracy instruction.

Projecting progress for second-roundchildren had they not been served inthe second round yields a year-endtext reading level of 9.5, assuming

linear growth. This assumption isprobably not entirely valid, due to the nonlinear nature of text readinglevels; the year-end level would probably be lower for this group. The treatment effect can be said toapproximate the difference betweenthe year-end average text reading levelfor the second-round discontinuedgroup (18.5) and the low-progressgroup (9.5). Rounding each averageto the nearest text level (18 and 10,respectively), this represents an esti-mated treatment effect of 8 text levelsat minimum.

Limitations to the Analysis: There aretwo main limitations to this analysis.The first is that text reading level isnot an equal interval scale. The sec-ond is that the mid-year time is notexact; it varies for every child. In spiteof these limitations, the difference atyear-end between the low-progressgroup and the two Reading Recoverygroups is a powerful visual representa-tion of acceleration resulting from theReading Recovery treatment effect.Although the children who discon-tinued were not quite at the level ofthe random sample (average progress)group, they are close enough to be,on aggregate, average readers and thusbenefit from classroom instruction.The same could not be said for thelow-progress group, who would be atleast eight text levels behind the ran-dom sample (average progress) group.

discontinued at mid-year. Their aver-age text reading level in fall was only.7. By the time they exited at mid-year, their average level was 13.7.First-round children who successfullycomplete their lessons, typicallyaround mid-year, evidence acceleratedprogress while in Reading Recoveryrelative to the random sample (aver-age progress) group. They also showcontinued progress in the approxi-mately four months between exit andyear-end, ending the year at essential-ly the same text reading level as therandom sample (average progress)group. Their average year-end scorewas 19.5.

Second-Round DiscontinuedStudents: The gray line for the graphis based on approximately 20,000 second-round students who discon-tinued in spring 2002. Childrenserved in the second round wereslightly better off, on average, thanfirst-round children because theybegan in fall with a text reading levelof 1.2. By mid-year, the second-round group entered ReadingRecovery with an average text readinglevel of 5.3, finishing in spring at18.5 on average.

Children served in the second roundmade slow progress between fall andmid-year, in spite of the fact thatabout 26% receive some other formof literacy intervention beforeReading Recovery. The acceleration of

Based upon a database of more than amillion Reading Recovery childrenserved in the United States since1984, accelerated learning progresshas been demonstrated consistently by80% of the children who have hadopportunity for a full program and by60% of all children who have receivedany tuition whatsoever in ReadingRecovery (Reading Recovery Councilof North America [RRCNA], 2002).These are facts that we as ReadingRecovery professionals can cite as weexplain the success of ReadingRecovery to others.

Factors Affecting AccelerationMarie Clay discusses acceleration inReading Recovery: A Guidebook forTeachers in Training (1993), mention-ing several specific factors that affectacceleration in learning. These include

• one-to-one teaching,

• teaching that starts with thechild’s strengths—what thechild already knows,

• integrating reading and writing,

• a high level of engagement inreading and writing continu-ous, meaningful texts,

• the teacher’s ability to “selectthe clearest, easiest, mostmemorable examples withwhich to establish a newresponse, skill, principle, orprocedure,”

• the teacher’s ability “to design a superbly sequencedprogramme determined bythe child’s performance” (pp. 9–11).

Reading Recovery teachers find itchallenging to learn Guidebook proce-dures to help them teach in ways that

result in accelerated learning (Jones,1991). The Guidebook does not pro-vide specific sequences or a fixed setof procedures; the instructional guide-lines and descriptions of proceduresare intentionally stated in a generalway because the kinds of decisionsmade for each child must be differentin content, timing, amount of repeti-tion, and intensity. The teacher’s deci-sions have to take into account whereeach child is in the program, what thechild is now capable of doing, andwhat the child is beginning to noticeand control. Perhaps even moreimportant, these children, the veryhardest to teach, are very differentfrom one another in strengths, inneeds, in profiles of performance, inexperiences, in interests, in emotionalmakeup—in most everything excepttheir status as low-progress literacylearners. Therefore, the proceduresrepresented in the Guidebook exist notas a manual but as a guide for uncov-ering and solving learning difficultiesand developing individual programsfor very specific children.

Successfully applying ReadingRecovery methodology can be com-pared to the task of guiding and pro-pelling a boat along a swift currentwith rocks on one side, shoals on theother, and unseen snags underneath.It is very easy to go wrong in manydifferent directions! On the one hand,the Guidebook tells teachers to thinkabout acceleration from the beginningof a child’s program. On the otherhand, it tells them they cannot pro-duce or induce acceleration—it is thechild who accelerates. Teachers learnthat a child needs to establish a reper-toire of words early that the child canread and write. But they are alsowarned that “when the teacherbecomes involved in teaching fordetail, the principle of acceleration isseriously threatened” (Clay, 1993, pp. 9–10). Self-regulation and inde-pendence are the goals of ReadingRecovery teaching; however, judi-ciously timed teacher support is a critical factor in a child’s learningprogress. Balancing these needs and

Teaching


Author Noel Jones facilitates a behind-the-glass session. Acceleration happensbecause Reading Recovery teachers and teacher leaders are trained to have a deep-level understanding of reading and writing processes and of possible sequences inlearning how to read and write.

avoiding mistakes makes ReadingRecovery teaching (and especiallylearning to be a Reading Recoveryteacher) a very challenging but inter-esting adventure!

Clay mentions two other factors thatcontribute greatly to the ability to fos-ter accelerated learning in children.The first factor concerns teacherknowledge. Teachers must learn evenmore than they have known as class-room teachers about the ways inwhich reading skill develops, aboutpossible teaching sequences, andabout permissible shortcuts. Second,teachers need to have available a set of materials that represent a graduatedsequence of difficulty through whichthey can move their students, andteachers must understand the materi-als, the difficulties that each bookmight present to particular children,and how to select and use each bookto best advantage for individual stu-dents (1993, pp. 7–11).

In short, all of Reading Recoveryteaching is focused toward both accel-eration and thoroughness in learning,but these goals are not easy to achieve.This is one of the reasons that teach-ers are required to teach four childrendaily and to teach two rounds of chil-dren per year—a minimum of eightchildren over a school year.3 Thisamount of experience seems to benecessary in order for a teacher tolearn how to make, and continue tomake, instructional decisions for eachindividual child based upon careful,sensitive observation, responsive tothat child’s emerging awareness ofmany aspects of reading and writing.

Explaining AccelerationIn addition to age and grade level(Reading Recovery children are first graders 6 to 7 years old), twothings can be said about all ReadingRecovery children. One is that theyare a very diverse group, and the second is that they enter ReadingRecovery as inefficient literacy learners. Reading Recovery achievesacceleration for most children in spite of their wide differences andinefficiencies!

Differences among Reading Recoverychildren arise from a large number offactors and from different combina-tions of these factors. Some childrenlack strength in almost all areasimportant to literacy processing, somelack strength in certain areas but showa degree of strength in others, andsome (especially many children seenduring the second round) have a fairamount of strength in most of whatwould be considered the sub-skills ofreading but have not learned how touse their item knowledge or skillknowledge as part of an integratedprocessing system. Moreover, the differences among children are notjust quantitative; they often involvemisconceptions about print or aboutwhat it means to read, incompletedevelopment in key areas of process-ing, inadequate prior learning, habit-uated avoidance strategies, poor commitment to learning (perhaps dueto lack of models), physical factors,learning styles or propensities, lan-guage structures and awareness, usesof language, and numerous other possibilities, many of which have notbeen well documented.

Ineffective learning can be explainedpartially in terms of these many factors that help to define differencesamong Reading Recovery children.But the need to learn how to learngoes beyond the problem of overcom-ing causal factors or untangling confu-sions. One explanation of how adultsor older students learn how to learnhas focused on the difference betweenrote learning and meaningful learning.Rote learning can be defined as mem-orized verbal information (such asmemorized dates, facts, poetry, or rulestatements) or as the learning of rou-tines; i.e., learning that is specificallytied to a single context and that doesnot transfer to other situations(Ausubel, Novak, & Hanesian, 1978;Gowin & Novak, 1984). A somewhatdifferent explanation of difficulties inlearning might be based upon thelearning categories of Gagne andBriggs (1979): verbal information,discriminations, concepts, problemsolving, and cognitive strategies. For


Teaching

Successfully applyingReading Recovery method-ology can be compared tothe task of guiding andpropelling a boat along aswift current with rocks onone side, shoals on theother, and unseen snagsunderneath. It is very easyto go wrong in many dif-ferent directions!

3 Teachers-in-training teach four children daily in a .5 full-time equivalent (FTE) position and two rounds of children per year.Experienced teachers in schools working toward full implementation teach a minimum of four children daily in a .5 FTE and serve two to three rounds per year; however, these teaching loads may be higher (or under special circumstances, lower) than fourdaily slots.

adults, new content and new areas ofexperience may cause problems forany of these types of learning. Forexample, learning how to discriminatebetween varieties of needle-leaf treesmay be as difficult for an adult begin-ning to study botany as learning todiscriminate letter forms may be for akindergarten child. Learning conceptsor problem-solving strategies in a newfield of study can be very challengingas well. When faced with such diffi-culties, learners often feel confusedand overwhelmed and may resort tomemorization of verbal definitions orto hopeful guessing (Gagne & Briggs,1979). Children’s difficulties in learn-ing how to learn may be similar tothose described for adults; however,adults usually have the advantage ofprevious successful learning on othertopics and in other contexts. Thestruggling young learners who enterReading Recovery, on the other hand,have had very limited experiencelearning new discriminations, concepts, problem-solving strategies,and cognitive strategies through themediation of language or through theagency of others, especially personswho are not their primary caregivers.

Much less is known or has been written about young children’s prob-lems in learning how to learn than is known or written about adults.Nevertheless, the experience ofReading Recovery professionals seemsto indicate that learning how tobecome an effective literacy learnerinvolves different things for differentindividuals. Some children overrely ona single source of information as theytry to read. For example, some overre-ly on language and a sense of meaningand invent stories from the pictureswith little regard for print. Others getso bogged down with letters and the

sounds associated with them that theyutter isolated sounds when attemptingto solve new words and cannot suc-ceed in creating coherent, meaningfullanguage as they read. Some childrenhave great difficulty using language asa mediator for learning; they have tobe shown, not told, and they needopportunities to manipulate letters,words, and sounds in addition toreading and writing connected texts.Other children seem to learn items ofinformation as rote learning, seeinglittle connection to similar words orto the stories and print to which theyare exposed. Many other children arevictims of inappropriate conceptsformed during group instructionwhich failed to take their priornotions into account or which inad-vertently produced misconceptions.Some children have never been readto or have never observed literacy inuse and just don’t understand whatthe learning enterprise is all about. Inlearning to write, children may persistin relying on primitive strategies, suchas putting letters together randomly,far past their usefulness. This prelimi-nary list of the kinds of learning inef-ficiencies encountered in childrenentering Reading Recovery must ofnecessity be incomplete, because newvariations on these and other themesare encountered almost daily.

One aspect of becoming an effectivelearner, however, seems to be neces-sary for the accelerated learningobserved in Reading Recovery chil-dren. This has been variously referredto as self-regulation (Diaz, Neal, &Amaya-Williams, 1990), the acquisi-tion of strategies (Clay, 1991), theassembly of working systems (Clay,2001), or the construction of knowl-edge (Moll, 1990). A child who isself-regulated reads for meaning andpurpose, independently searches for

and evaluates information in the actsof problem-solving during reading,and applies analogical thinking andother strategies to communicate inwriting. Furthermore, the self-regulat-ed child begins to learn and thenextends that learning through theseproblem-solving experiences. In con-trast, a child who is other-regulatedand trained to perform routines—even though these routines appear to be very strategic—will usually bemuch more limited in extendinglearning capability into new domainsor to new challenges. An example is achild who rereads rather mechanicallyand purposelessly, and sometimesrepetitively, when meeting difficultyin a text. Such a child has acquired abehavior under the influence of teach-ing, rather than having a self-regulat-ed, self-initiated strategy. Teaching inways that foster self-regulation andacceleration is quite challengingbecause it involves much more thanencouraging independence. Skillfulteaching interaction is essential, but inthese interactions the teacher mustavoid the dangers of overregulationand overdirection.

In summary, I have proposed a viewthat all children who struggle with literacy are inefficient literacy learners(though some may learn quite satis-factorily in other domains), that thecauses and patterns of learning diffi-culty differ from child to child, andthat acceleration in learning can occurwhen a skillful teacher is able to deter-mine a particular child’s strengths andspecific impediments to learning andengages the child in a sequence oflearning experiences that allow thatchild to learn how to learn.

The Reading Recovery approach toinstruction is complex and difficult toclassify. It has been praised by many

Teaching


instructional designers and specialeducators because it does includemany of the characteristics of a directinstruction approach such as positivefeedback, careful demonstration, repe-tition to the point of mastery, massivepractice to develop automaticity,instructional decisions based uponclose observation, and regular collec-tion of performance data. On theother hand, Reading Recovery’s guide-lines for teaching have more frequent-ly been classified as constructivist.Clay (2001) talks about the child asthe agent of learning—as a learnerwho uses a repertoire of strategies forproblem-solving and, through prob-lem-solving applied to literacy tasks,continues to expand literacy capabili-ties as the child engages in meaningfulreading and writing experiences.

Truth resides in both positions; how-ever, two important differencesemerge in comparing the theoreticalideas of Clay to the ideas of otherswho offer solutions to the readingproblems of at-risk learners. First,Clay recognizes the wide range of dif-ferences among learners, particularlythose learners having difficulty as theybegin the task of learning to becomeliterate (1998). She eschews grouptreatments that assume that a singlecausal variable, such as phonemicawareness, is the explanation of learn-ing difficulties among the lowest-per-forming students. Second, althoughClay is a constructivist in the sensethat she believes that it is the learnerwho learns, she also recognizes that agreat deal of instructional support andscaffolding (without creating depend-ence) will often be needed in order toallow the inefficient beginning learnerto become an efficient, independentlearner. For many children, school andlife conditions have resulted in thepersistence of inefficient and counter-

productive approaches to learning;however, Reading Recovery hasdemonstrated that it is possible tobreak this pattern of slow learningprogress.

Clay’s concept of a self-extending sys-tem (1991) is relevant to the premise Ihave developed about learning how tolearn. Although Clay sometimes talksabout the establishment of a self-extending system as the long-termobjective of Reading Recovery tuition,she has also discussed it as the instruc-tional means—as the kind of dailyprocessing and engagement that willlead to the long-term goal. For exam-ple, in a general discussion of learningprinciples, she writes

Plan to encourage a self-extend-ing system and reinforce this:

• Give the child ways to detecterror for himself.

• Encourage attempts to correcterror.

• Give him clues to aid self-cor-rection.

• Allow him to make checks orrepetitions so he can confirmhis first attempts.

• When he works out a wordor text for himself, help himto know how he did it. Askhim, ‘How did you know?’(1993, p. 15).

In this brief introduction to instruc-tional principles, the term self-extend-ing system emphasizes the role of thechild in learning. In referring to a self-extending system as a goal of ReadingRecovery teaching, Clay seems to beemphasizing the self-sufficient natureof the system once it is well under-way—which may occur even afterReading Recovery teaching has beendiscontinued.

Clay recognizes the importance bothof the child’s role and the adult’s rolein learning (especially for childrenhaving difficulty with learning in cer-tain areas). She has compared skillfulteaching and learning to a two-wayconversation in which the contribu-tions of both parties are essential.


Teaching

Reading Recovery students are very different from one another—in strengths, in needs, in profiles of performance, in experiences, in interests, in emotionalmakeup—in most everything except their status as low-progress literacy learners.

These contributions are not just verbal exchanges; they include eachparty’s prior knowledge and experi-ence, awareness of what the otherknows, language competence, thoughtprocesses, utterances, perception ofutterances, nonverbal responses, andmuch more. Some contributions maynot even be understood at the timebecause they involve complex, in-the-head processing that we may only bebeginning to infer! The complexityand power of this interaction betweena teacher and child while the child islargely engaged in reading and writingcontinuous texts justifies the individ-ual nature of Reading Recovery tutoring.

An explanation of acceleration as aperiod during which children learnhow to learn much more effectivelyseems to fit with the patterns ofbehaviors observed in ReadingRecovery. It also seems to account forthe limited-time nature of accelerationin literacy learning. Once effectivelearning strategies have been estab-lished, the child has achieved a certainmeasure of equality with those chil-dren who have had such a system inplace from the start. ReadingRecovery children have made up a lotof ground (at even a faster pace thanmany average children in the class),

but any further advantage is depend-ent upon idiosyncratic factors andconditions. Continued tutoring pastthe point of developing a self-extending system might result in fur-ther changes in a child’s relative stand-ing among peers, but it is my beliefthat striving to achieve such changeswould not continue to be economical.

This interpretation of acceleration asdependent upon learning how to learnis also consistent with the observationof many Reading Recovery teachersthat waiting too long to intervenemakes it more difficult to get acceler-ated learning underway. The explana-tion here is that children have moreunlearning to do, that older miscon-ceptions and habits have becomemore firmly established, and the taskof changing patterns of inefficientlearning is more daunting.

The issue of how long a period ofaccelerated learning might last has notactually been resolved. In the processof establishing an effective learningsystem, a child makes up groundrather quickly, catching up with class-room peers. At some point, the childis able to profit from classroominstruction and maintain, withoutcontinued tutoring, a learning pacenot significantly different from that ofage-mates. Although the child mightcontinue to benefit from individualReading Recovery service and perhapsmake progress at a somewhat faster orsteadier pace than untutored peers, itnow becomes uneconomical to con-tinue one-to-one tutoring.

The difficult task of determiningwhen the time has come to discontin-ue service for each individual child ismade professionally and collaborative-ly by the Reading Recovery teacher,the teacher leader, and the classroomteacher. School and site level data are

also studied carefully to review andvalidate the decision making. ReadingRecovery data collected on hundredsof thousands of children demonstratethat children do continue to makeappropriate learning progress follow-ing discontinuance, though continuedmonitoring of this progress throughmonthly consultations or booster ses-sions provide a healthy kind of insur-ance and support for some children.The program standard of two roundsof children per teacher and the guide-line for terminating service to first-round children and evaluating themafter 20 weeks of tutoring are basedupon what is known about acceleratedlearning. Special research studies(Clay, 1982, 1991, 1993) and dataroutinely collected on all ReadingRecovery students provide the basis of informed estimates of the mosteconomical policies and standards.

Implications of AccelerationSeveral implications of this concept ofinduced accelerative learning need tobe emphasized. First, accelerationexplains the claim that ReadingRecovery is economical. BecauseReading Recovery helps at-risk chil-dren build an efficient learning sys-tem, it can be a short-term interven-tion. Clay’s research suggests that forthe majority of Reading Recoverychildren, a sufficient degree of learn-ing efficiency will be established with-in a period of 20 weeks of skillfultutoring (summarized in Clay, 1993;Clay & Tuck, 1991). Continuing theintervention beyond that time maywork for a few children, but in themain it appears to be uneconomical to continue beyond that point. Clayexplains that if accelerated learning isnot achieved within 20 weeks, eitherlearning issues may be present thatrequire specialist attention and the

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Acceleration explains theclaim that ReadingRecovery is economical.Because Reading Recoveryhelps at-risk children buildan efficient learning system, it can be a short-term intervention.

child needs to be referred for furtherassessment, or the chances that thischild will start to make acceleratedlearning process under the sameteaching and learning regimen arevery slim. Continuing the same program beyond 20 weeks would beuneconomical. Only a serious changein intensity and approach might succeed in changing these prospects,requiring a greater investment ofanalysis and collaboration with spe-cialists than most Reading Recoveryteachers are able to contribute in theirschool settings.

Another reason Reading Recovery iseconomical is that it is preventive; itestablishes an effective learning systemfor early literacy that gives the child atool to use to help overcome literacylearning hurdles in the future. Clayreinforces this point and then goes onto qualify the conditions for futuresuccess:

When an early interventionbuilds effective reading andwriting processing systems thatcan handle texts of differentkinds,…then that early inter-vention provides the learnerwith the potential for subse-quent successful progress.Whether that potential isrealised depends upon whetherthe early intervention programhas prepared the learner suffi-ciently well to engage withinstruction several years lateron, or whether, alternatively, thesubsequent classroom instruc-tion has been good enough toallow the reader to build uponthe foundation laid by the inter-vention (2001, p. 216).

The prediction is that on average,Reading Recovery graduates will con-tinue to do well in school in future

years, and longitudinal data collectedfrom a number of sites seems to bearthis out (Askew et al., 2002; Brown,Denton, Kelly, & Neal, 1999; Hovest& Day, 1997; Schmitt & Gregory,2001).

A second implication concerns thedifficulty of attaining acceleratedlearning. Acceleration does not hap-pen just because the child is receivingone-to-one instruction; it does nothappen because the teacher knows aset of procedures. Acceleration hap-pens because a Reading Recoveryteacher is trained to have a deep-levelunderstanding of reading and writingprocesses and of possible sequences inlearning how to read and write. Buteven that is not enough; the teachermust also be able to observe and ana-lyze each child during learningepisodes, gauge appropriate learningexperiences for that child, makeinstructional moves contingent uponwhat that child appears to be noticingabout language and print and aboutrelationships between and among let-ters and words and punctuation, andmuch more. And, if the child appearsto be especially hard to accelerate, theteacher is urged to observe moreclosely, to question teaching decisionsand interactions, to consult with apeer teacher, to consult with a teacherleader who has additional experiencein solving learning difficulties, andthen to try out revised approaches andobserve carefully what is or is notworking (Clay, 1993; Jones, 2001).

Demonstration of the power of ana-lytic Reading Recovery teaching andpeer collaboration in serving childrencan be seen in the work of two NewZealand Reading Recovery tutors. Byusing the guidelines recommended forall Reading Recovery teachers—although with greater intensity, greater

depth of analysis, and more collabora-tion among teachers—they were ableto establish accelerated learning forchildren who had not successfullyaccelerated their learning during aninitial 20-week Reading Recoveryintervention (Philips & Smith, 1997).The value of collaboration of this typeis clearly recognized in the design ofReading Recovery: one of the rolesexpected of Reading Recovery teacherleaders is that they will act as consult-ants to Reading Recovery teachers asthey wrestle with issues in teachingthose children who present the mostperplexing learning challenges.

A third implication of the concept ofacceleration concerns the possibility ofaccelerated learning for all children.Reading Recovery serves the lowestchildren within an age cohort withoutexclusions. Referrals for evaluation interms of exceptionalities should fol-low, not precede, Reading Recoveryservice, since many children (whootherwise would be referred) canestablish effective learning patternsthrough the intervention. It has beendifficult for many administrators, as


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“When an early interven-tion builds effective reading and writing processing systems thatcan handle texts of different kinds,…thenthat early interventionprovides the learner with the potential forsubsequent successfulprogress.”

— Marie Clay

well as many Reading Recovery professionals, to accept and apply thestandard of “selecting the lowest per-forming student at each selectionopportunity” (RRCNA, 1998)because it seems logical that the lowerthe child, the more effort may beneeded to allow acceleration to occur.However, this cannot be predicted onthe basis of entering scores (Clay,2001).

In summary, the concept of accelera-tion—interpreted as an interventionto help inefficient learners learn howto learn in self-regulated and self-sus-taining ways—lies at the heart of thedesign and of the standards andguidelines of Reading Recovery. This design and Reading Recoverystandards and guidelines have beenestablished on the basis of thorough,clinical, experimental, and groundedresearch as well as extensive field trialson more than a million children(Jones & Smith-Burke, 2000;RRCNA, 2002). It is not easy to teach in ways that enable children to achieve accelerated learning, andacceleration is most difficult toachieve by children who present themost daunting challenges. But it is thepossibility of succeeding with suchchildren, and thereby dramaticallyreducing the amount of failure in literacy learning, that makes ReadingRecovery such a valuable and, in thelong-run, economical interventionsystem. As Reading Recovery profes-sionals, we need to know how to talkabout acceleration—the key to thepower of Reading Recovery and towhat we do!

ReferencesAskew, B. J., Kaye, E., Frasier, D.,

Mobasher, M., Anderson N., &Rodríguez, Y. (2002). Making a casefor prevention in education. Literacy

Teaching and Learning: AnInternational Journal of Early Readingand Writing, 6(2), 43–73.

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Brown, W., Denton, E., Kelly, P., & Neal,J. (1999). Reading Recovery effective-ness: A five-year success story in SanLuis Coastal Unified School District.ERS Spectrum: Journal of SchoolResearch and Information, 17(1), 3–12.

Clay, M. M. (1982). Observing youngreaders: Selected papers. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate: Theconstruction of inner control.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1993). Reading Recovery:Guidebook for teachers in training.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1998). Different paths tocommon outcomes. York, ME:Stenhouse.

Clay, M. M. (2001). Change over time inchildren’s literacy development.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M., & Tuck, B. (1991). A studyof Reading Recovery subgroups: Includingoutcomes for children who did not satisfydiscontinuing criteria. Auckland, NewZealand: University of Auckland.

Diaz, R., Neal, C., & Amaya-Williams,M. (1990). The social origins of self-regulation. In L. C. Moll. (Ed.),Vygotsky and education: Instructionalimplications, applications and sociohis-torical psychology. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Gagne, R., & Briggs, L. (1979). Principlesof instructional design. New York: Holt,Rinehart, and Winston.

Gowin, D. B., & Novak, J. D. (1984).Learning how to learn. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Hovest C., & Day, J. (1997, February).Sustaining gains: Ohio’s ReadingRecovery students in fourth grade. Paper

presented at the 12th Annual ReadingRecovery Conference and NationalInstitute, Columbus, OH.

Jones, N. (1991). Helping to learn:Components and principles of ReadingRecovery training. Reading Horizons,31(5), 421–438.

Jones, N. (2001). A decision-makingmodel of Reading Recovery teaching:Figuring out what to do when.Running Record, 13(2), 1–8.

Jones, N., & Smith-Burke, M. (2001).Forging an interactive relationshipamong research, theory, and practice:Clay’s research design and methodolo-gy. In J. Gaffney & B. Askew (Eds.),Stirring the waters: The influence ofMarie Clay. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Moll, L. C. (Ed.). (1990). Vygotsky andeducation: Instructional implicationsand applications of sociohistorical psy-chology. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Morris, D., Tyner, B., & Perney, J. (2000).Early steps: Replicating the effects of afirst-grade reading intervention pro-gram. Journal of Educational Psychology,92, 681–693.

Phillips, G., & Smith, P. (1997). Closingthe gaps: Literacy for the hardest to teach.Wellington, New Zealand: NewZealand Council for EducationalResearch.

More than one million children served:Results 2000–2001. (2002). Columbus,OH: Reading Recovery Council ofNorth America.

Schmitt, M. C., & Gregory, A. E. (2001).The impact of early literacy interven-tions: Where are the children now? Paperpresented at the annual meeting of theNational Reading Conference, SanAntonio, TX.

Standards and guidelines of the ReadingRecovery Council of North America (3rded.). (1998). Columbus, OH: ReadingRecovery Council of North America.

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acceleration: the key to reading recovery benefits

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