Assessment

In Reading Recovery, individual assessments reveal

• upper and lower case letters the child can identify by naming the letter, giving the letter sound, or naming a word beginning with the letter or sound.
• phonemes the child can connect to letters.
• specific phonemes the child can represent with letters in writing.
• the degree to which children use letter-sound knowledge and word patterns to read and write words.
• the degree to which the child can locate words in a text after hearing them.
• the child’s ability to use letter-sound knowledge while reading continuous text.

Examples of Instructional Procedures

• Using magnetic letters, children learn quick and flexible recognition of letters; they also learn how to take words apart using phonological and orthographic knowledge.
• When reading continuous text, children learn to take words apart ‘on the run.’
• In writing, children learn to hear the sounds in words and represent them with letters or letter clusters.
• Children work with letters and related sounds (e.g., making personalized alphabet books to link sounds and letters).
• Reassembling a cut-up sentence requires children to think about sounds in words as they place the words in order; the teacher segments words to focus on what a child needs to learn next.
• During oral reading of texts, children learn to use phonological and orthographic information to monitor their reading and to decode unfamiliar words; they learn to ‘take words apart’ on the run while reading texts.

Clay, M. M. (2002). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.