Phonics

Does Reading Recovery teach phonics?
Reading Recovery lessons include all five essential components of reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel (2000). The panel cautioned against making phonics instruction the dominant component in a reading program, either in the amount of time devoted to it or in the significance attached. They acknowledged that learning to read and write is a complex process.

Within a comprehensive approach, Reading Recovery teachers understand the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics for beginning readers and writers. During lessons, teachers attend to letters, sounds, and words and incorporate learning about letter-sound relationships during the reading and writing of extended text and as explicit, direct instruction.

Recognition of Reading Recovery’s success in teaching phonics
In her book on research related to beginning reading, Marilyn Adams said this about Reading Recovery lessons: “The importance of phonological and linguistic awareness is also explicitly recognized” (1990, p. 420).

Researchers and scholars outside the Reading Recovery community have demonstrated that Reading Recovery lessons lead to the acquisition of phonological skills:

• The What Works Clearinghouse report documents positive effects (its highest rating) on Reading Recovery students' alphabetics skills. Alphabetics includes phonemic awareness, print awareness, letter knowledge, and phonics.
   
• A study by Stahl, Stahl, and McKenna (1999) concluded that Reading Recovery children acquire phonological awareness and phonological recoding within their lessons.
   
• A study by Iversen and Tunmer (1993) acknowledged that Reading Recovery includes explicit instruction in phonological areas and that the children performed better than a control group on phonological assessments.
   
• Researchers in the United Kingdom (Sylva & Hurry, 1996) compared Reading Recovery with a phonological intervention. They found Reading Recovery to be the more powerful intervention across time and particularly effective for socially disadvantaged children.
   

References
Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Iversen, S., & Tunmer, W. (1993). Phonological processing skills and the Reading Recovery program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(1), 112–126.

Stahl, K. A. D., Stahl, S., & McKenna, M. C. (1999). The development of phonological awareness and orthographic processing in Reading Recovery. Literacy Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing, 4(1), 27–42.

Sylva, K., & Hurry, J. (1995). Early intervention in children with reading difficulties: An evaluation of Reading Recovery and a phonological training. Literacy, Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Early Literacy, 2(2), 49–68.