Throughout my 16 years of teaching, I have had a front-row seat to the reality that children learn at different rates and within different learning styles. How schools handle this reality is where my position as an interventionist comes into play. Intervention is needed when core instruction does not entirely meet the needs of students. At Benton Community, we are fortunate to have district support to implement Reading Recovery. Reading Recovery is a first grade intervention that is available to students at both the Atkins and Keystone centers. Students selected for Reading Recovery receive daily literacy lessons tailored to their specific needs, taught by a trained Reading Recovery teacher. These trained teachers receive targeted professional learning to develop their observational skills to plan and implement lessons. Using Marie Clay’s extensive research, Reading Recovery continues to be a highly effective intervention.
I believe the power of Reading Recovery really lies within the professional learning community. This professional learning community is specifically trained to analyze each student’s strategic activity while processing text to determine the next steps. By looking at individual skills and literacy behaviors, and collaborating with my team of teachers, I am able to help form strong foundational literacy skills with emergent readers.