Reading Recovery and Common Core Standards
Reading Recovery plays a vital role in meeting Common Core State Standards
The Common Core State Standards spell out knowledge and skills students should have in their K–12 academic years so that all students are college and career ready at the end of high school.
Because of its effectiveness as an early intervention, Reading Recovery can play a vital role in ensuring that students are able to meet the goals of the Standards and are proficient in literacy by the end of high school. RRCNA has several free resources available that address the Common Core State Standards.
On-demand webcast and journal article
Jeff Williams offers an overview of the common ground between Reading Recovery and the Common Core State Standards in a 20-minute webcast. The focus is on reading literature and informational texts, writing, and text complexity issues to demonstrate how Reading Recovery’s framework and teaching support children in Common Core classrooms.
The webcast is a companion to an article of the same title in the spring issue of The Journal of Reading Recovery. Jeff examines how CCSS implementation will likely influence classroom instruction and provides answers to questions that teachers and administrators might have about Reading Recovery in the context of the Common Core.
- What alignment exists between Reading Recovery and Common Core?
- What does the new emphasis on comprehension mean for Reading Recovery?
- What are possible implications about writing for Reading Recovery?
- What do literacy teachers need to know about the “text complexity” concept?
- and much more
The article also explores all six “strands” of the Common Core—Reading Literature; Reading Informational Text; Reading Foundational; Writing; Speaking and Listening; and Language—with commentary on each strand. For easy reference, charts containing the actual CCSS for Grade 1 are included, and alignment to Reading Recovery teaching and practices is noted in more than 90% of the 41 Grade 1 standards.
RRCNA report
RRCNA has published a description of how Reading Recovery plays a vital role to ensure that first graders who struggle with literacy learning can meet grade-level standards and benefit from instruction at every subsequent grade level.
Read the Common Core State Standards
Resources
On-demand webcast
Common Ground: Reading Recovery and the Common Core State Standards
Jeff Williams is a Reading Recovery teacher leader and K–12 literacy coach for Solon City Schools in Solon, OH. He was elected to serve on the National Council of Teachers of English Executive Committee from 2008–2011 and chaired a national review team that provided feedback on drafts of the Common Core State Standards.
Journal article (PDF)
Jeff’s article, “Common Ground: Reading Recovery and the Common Core State Standards,” appears in the spring 2013 issue of The Journal of Reading Recovery and can be downloaded here.
Read more about Implementation
THE JOURNAL OF READING RECOVERY
Spring 2025
OPEN ACCESS: Centering Children and Working Towards Equity: Teaching All Children to Read by Catherine Compton-Lilly
Literacy Leadership in Support of Equity: Whatever It Takes by Allison Briceño
Exploring the Purposes, Power, and Potential of Familiar Reading by Jamie Lipp
Full Circle: From Student to Psychologist by Joyce Romano