Reading & Writing Quarterly, 17: 3237348, 2001

Copyright # 2001 Taylor & Francis

1057-3569 /01 $12.00 + .00

READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION IN REGULAR

PRIMARY-LEVEL CLASSROOMS BY TEACHERS
TRAINED IN READING RECOVERY
Alysia D. Roehrig and M ichael Pressley
U niversity of N otre Dame, Indiana, U S A
M arlys S loup
M adison M etropolitan S chool District,
M adison, Wisconsin, U S A

Do teachers trained in Reading Recovery (RR) modify their regular classroom

teaching to use RR-type instructional practices and to teach students the strategies typically taught during RR tutoring sessions? Ten classrooms (three
kindergartens, ve grade one classrooms, and two grade two classrooms) were
observed over the course of two school years. In all ten classrooms, teachers used
instructional practices and teaching strategies typical of RR. The teachers also
completed questionnaires about their integration of RR-type instruction into the
whole classroom and the differences in their instruction before and after having
undergone RR training. Further research should be done to understand how
aspects of this beginning reading intervention program affects the achievement
of students when teachers transfer RR strategies to the regular classroom.

Reading RecoveryTM (RR) is a beginning reading intervention program

that has been widely disseminated (Lyons, Pinnell, & DeFord, 1993).
Typically, students in RR are in rst grade, making slow progress in
learning to read in a regular classroom. The intervention is a supplemental form of instruction involving daily, one-to-one-lessons, with each
lesson lasting about a half hour. Lessons continue for as long as a semester, and a large proportion of children who experience RR improve as
readers (see Pinnell, 1997).

Portions of this study were presented at the National Reading Conference in Orlando,
Florida (December 1999) , the meeting of the American Education Research Association in
New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2000) , and the meeting of the International Reading Association
in Indianapolis, Indiana (May 2000) .
Address correspondence to Alysia D. Roehrig, Department of Psychology, 119 A Haggar
Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 . E-mail: roehrig.1@nd.edu
323

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

The purpose of this article is not to document the effectiveness of RR

tutoring, but rather to assess whether teachers trained in RR use RR-type
instructional practices and teach RR strategies to their students during
regular classroom instruction. The strategies are what the students need to
do to become self-regulated readers and writers (e.g., self-correcting, rereading to achieve uency, searching for multiple decoding cues), while the
instructional practices are the tools and contexts teachers employ while
scaffolding students in the use of these strategies (e.g., taking running
records, previewing books, writing in response to reading).
The only way to determine whether teachers employed RR techniques was to observe them, watching for the instruction of strategies
emphasized in RR; hence, observation was the main method employed in
this investigation (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). In order to recognize and
appreciate the teaching of RR techniques in regular education classrooms, it was necessary for the researchers to become thoroughly familiar with RR tutoring. Similarly, for readers of this article to appreciate
the teaching of strategies documented here, it is necessary to know a bit
about RR.

THE COM M ON STRUCTURE OF RR LESSONS

A typical RR lesson involves a series of literacy tasks (Clay, 1993; Lyons
et al., 1993). First, the child reads familiar books aloud to the teacher, with
the goal of developing uent reading. This is followed by the reading of
another book that is not quite as familiar, one introduced to the child the
day before. During the reading of yesterdays new book, the teacher notes
what the child does well and records any errors, using this information to
make instructional decisions. For example, when the child makes a word
recognition error, the teacher notes whether the child relied on meaning
cues, syntactic cues, or visual cues to predict the word, with this analysis
informing instructional decision making. Thus, if the child misreads bit as
sit, the teacher might focus the childs attention on meaning (Did that
make sense?) or the initial letter s (What letter did you expect to see
rst in sit?), prompting the child to cross-check meaning and visual information.
After the reading, the teacher continues the lesson by asking the
student to identify letters or make words using plastic letters. For example,
the teacher might focus on words with the it chunk, prompting the child
to construct the words bit, t, and sit. Then, the child might break these
words to see that bit is b plus it and t is f plus it, illustrating the
principle that new words can be made by changing the rst letter of a
known word.

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

325

Following the letter and word work, the child writes about a personal
experience or in response to a story that was read in the session, with the
teacher providing assistance as needed. During writing, the teacher encourages the child to say words slowly and listen for their sounds in order to
write using conventional spelling. The teacher assists the student with
completing a sentence by writing all letters and words that the child is not yet
able to hear and write. Then, the teacher writes the sentence on a paper strip
and cuts the strip into individual words. The child reassembles the cut-up
sentence and reads it for the teacher. The RR lesson concludes with the
teacher introducing a new book to the student, who attempts to read it for the
teacher. Homework involves taking home the cut-up sentence and the books
read during the lesson so that the student can work on reading with a parent.
In short, RR is about teaching strategies to struggling readers (Clay,
1993; Lyons et al., 1993). Throughout an RR lesson, the teacher attempts to
determine the reading and writing strategies used by the child. Thus, early
in the childs program, the teacher attempts to determine the readers
understanding of directionality (i.e., whether reading and writing are left to
right and top to bottom). The teacher also attends to whether the child is
processing individual words in a sequence, that is, if the child is noticing
the spaces between words read and putting spaces between words written.
The teacher notes whether the child is monitoring reading and writing, that
is, going back and attempting to reread a misread word or asking for help to
spell an unknown word. The nature of the childs errors are revealing about
her or his reading and writing strategies as well as about the strategies the
child needs to learn (Pinnell, 1989).
The RR teachers role is to stimulate the use of more effective strategies during reading and writing than the ones currently used by the
young reader (Clay, 1993; Lyons et al., 1993). For example, to encourage
the development of directionality, the teacher prompts the child to read it
with your nger, pointing to each word as it is encountered in text. In
order to increase the childs understanding of the concept of individual
words, the teacher also prompts the child to write words with spaces between them, using the strategy of putting a nger space between written
words. The teacher teaches the child to sound out words by saying them
slowly, breaking words into discrete sounds (e.g., cat into the c, short
a, and t sounds). The RR teacher also teaches the young reader to
check decoding by determining whether the reading of a word makes sense
in the story being read. As with many forms of strategy instruction (Clay,
1991; Duffy et al., 1987; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pearson & Gallagher,
1983; Pressley et al., 1992), there is a gradual release of responsibility
during RR, with the teacher more directive and explicit at rst, and the
child increasingly self-regulating with strategy use as lessons proceed and
competence develops.

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

Many RR teachers are involved in RR only part time, for example,

serving as RR teachers in the morning and as regular classroom teachers
the rest of the day. Others teach RR when the need in the school is great
and funding or remediation is plentiful, but return to regular classroom
teaching when there is less demand or nancial resources to support RR
tutoring of individual students. Thus, in this study, we explored how RRtrained teachers transfer the skills they acquired as part of RR into
regular classroom teaching. Such transfer is important to study, because
Pinnell, Lyons, DeFord, Bryk, and Seltzer (1994) reported that when
teachers intentionally modied grade one teaching in ways consistent
with RR, there were positive effects on reading achievement of low-performing students.

M ETHOD
In order to determine whether RR teachers use RR-type instructional
practices and strategies during their regular classroom teaching, a sample
of RR-trained teachers who had regular instruction duties was identied.
These teachers were observed repeatedly, with the observers especially
attentive to teaching that seemed to reect RR teaching practices and
strategies.

Participant s
The participants were three kindergarten, ve grade one, and two grade
two teachers in Madison, Wisconsin, who were observed between January
1997 and April 1999. The students of these teachers were an ethnically and
socioeconomically diverse urban population. All of the teachers had participated in some level of RR training provided in the district by the third
author of this study, a university-trained and certied RR trainer. Formal
RR training consists of a year of graduate level course work and a practicum in which the trainee works with four RR students. Informal RR training
consists of a year of graduate level course work and a practicum in which
the trainee works with only one RR student. A distinguishing characteristic
of the practicum training involves the use of a one-way mirror. A trainee
works one-on-one with a RR student behind a one-way mirror while other
trainees and trainers watch and provide the observed trainee with feedback. Only teachers formally trained in RR can become certied RR teachers and be employed to do RR teaching. In contrast, some teachers in the
study received RR in-services, which were one-time general information
classes where some of the RR instructional techniques and strategies were
taught. The extent of the RR training, amount of RR teaching experience,

327

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

TABLE 1

Teacher
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J

Descriptive Information about the Teacher-Participants in this Study

Reading Recovery
Training

Years as Reading
Recovery Teacher

Grades Taught During

199771998 and
199871999

RR in-services
Formal training
(certified RR teacher)
Informal training

0
5

Kindergarten
Kindergarten

Formal training
(certified RR teacher)
RR in-services
RR in-services
Formal training
(certified RR teacher)
Formal training
(certified RR teacher)
Formal training
(certified RR teacher)
Formal training
(certified RR teacher)

Kindergarten,
Grade one
Grade one

0
0
3

Grade one
Grade one
Grade one

Grade one, none

Grade two

Grade two

and the grade level taught by each teacher-participant in this study are
described in Table 1.

Observations
The rst and second authors of this study either together or separately
visited classes. Teacher-participants were told that the purpose of the
observations was to document how literacy instruction occurs in their
language arts classrooms. Visits were scheduled at the convenience of the
teachers. Each visit lasted between 45 minutes and three hours. The length
of the visits varied somewhat because: (a) teachers observed in 1997 were
also part of another study, which required prolonged visits, and (b) the
observers traveled from out of town to visit classrooms, and some teachers=classrooms were more available when the researchers were in
Madison. The number of visits to each teachers classroom is recorded in
Tables 2 and 3.
The observers were well aware of the instructional practices and
strategies emphasized in traditional RR, with the intent of determining
which RR instructional practices and strategies were being taught. To use
Wolcotts (1988) term, the researchers were privileged observers
attempting to be as unobtrusive as possible and seldom interacting with
the teacher or students during the observations. During each visit, the

328

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

C*
(6)

K&1

X
X

X
X
X

D*
(7)

X
X
X

X
X

E2
(5)

X
X
X

F*
(6)

Grade One

G2
(1)

X
X
X
X

X
X

H1
(1)

I*
(3)

J*
(5)

Grade Two

Note: The numbers in parentheses designate the number of different occasions when researchers observed in the classroom. Starred (*) teachers
were observed by both researchers, and hence their data was used to calculate reliabilities. The instructional practices indicated for these seven
teachers were practices that both observers agreed occurred. Teachers observed only by the rst author are designated with a 1 superscript, and
those seen only by the second author with a 2 superscript.

B*
(7)

A*
(6)

Kindergarten

Teachers in the Study

Reading Recovery Instructional Practices Observed in Classrooms Observed

Reading Recoverylike individual

lessons
Running Records
Leveled Books
Preview Books
Writing Response
Transcription
Cut-up Sentences
Letter-sound
Correspondence
Writing
Individual Letters
Spelling Repetitions
Punctuation
Conventions
Positive Feedback

TABLE 2

329

X
X
X

X
X
X

B*
(7)
X
X

X
X
X
X

C*
(6)

K&1

X
X
X
X
X
X
X

D*
(7)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

E2
(5)
X
X
X

X
X
X

F*
(6)

Grade One

X
X
X

X
X
X

G2
(1)

X
X
X
X
X
X

H1
(1)

X
X
X
X
X

I*
(3)

X
X

X
X
X
X

J*
(5)

Grade Two

Note: The numbers in parentheses designate the number of different occasions when researchers observed in the classroom. Starred (*) teachers
were observed by both researchers, and hence their data was used to calculate reliabilities. The strategies indicated for these seven teachers were
strategies that both observers agreed occurred. Teachers observed only by the rst author are designated with a 1 superscript, and those seen only by
the second author with a 2 superscript.

X
X
X
X
X
X
X

A*
(6)

Kindergarten

Teachers in the Study

Reading Recovery Strategies Taught in Classrooms Observed

Self-correction
Fluency
Word Wall
Multiple Decoding Cues
Chunks
Stretching Words
Movements

TABLE 3

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

observers took eld notes on the various activities occurring in the classroom, with special attention given to instruction consistent with RR and
instruction about the strategies emphasized in RR.

Dat a Coding
The coding process in this study was consistent with the grounded theory
approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998). The observational notes were reviewed as the study proceeded so that analyses and data collection comingled throughout the study. In particular, the researchers labeled
instructional strategies and practices that seemed to be consistent with RR.
The two researchers shared with one another the instructional practices
and strategies that reected RR inuence, with both observers adjusting
their labeling of practices and strategies and paying attention to particular
aspects of teaching as a function of these ongoing interactions. The labeling
of RR-inuenced practices and strategies (as previously described) led to
the development of a list of 66 different teaching practices and strategies
that seemed consistent with RR. Both observers re-reviewed their observational notes and indicated the presence or absence of each of the 66
practices and strategies during each observation.
By the conclusion of the observations, the two observers were in
agreement with respect to the range of particular practices and strategies
that were consistent with or at least inuenced by RR. Because seven of the
teachers had been observed by both observers, interrater reliabilities could
be calculated by creating a ratio of the practices or strategies that both
observers agreed to have either occurred or not occurred over the total
number of different practices or strategies observed by both observers.
With respect to instructional practices, the 73% agreement was low but still
in the acceptable range, especially considering that the two observers did
not always observe the teachers at the same time. With respect to the
strategies that were identied by the raters, there was higher (92% )
agreement between the two raters about which teachers taught each of the
strategies.

Quest ionnaire
The 66 RR strategies and instructional practices observed somewhat
overlapped. In fact, it was possible to reduce the list by collapsing across
similar strategies and practices. The result was a list of 29 strategies and
practices, each of which were tapped into on a questionnaire distributed to
teacher-participants at the conclusion of our two years of observations (see
Tables 4 and 5 for a list of the items). The questionnaire was reviewed by

331

1. Do you model for and have students reread their own writing to
determine if it makes sense and to find mistakes and fix them?
2. Do you model for and have students reread a passage to
determine if their reading makes sense and to correct mistakes?
3. Do you model fluency and phrasing, reminding students that
their reading should sound natural like when they talk?
4. Do you model for and remind students of the concepts of print
(i.e., that print goes from left to right, top to bottom, front
to back, and that there are spaces between words and
lines of print)?
5. Do you have students use multiple cues (i.e., letters, context,
illustrations) to read words?
6. Do you have students focus more on the letter cues in words
than on the context or illustrations to help them read words?
7. Do you have students point to words while reading?
8. Do you use practices such as pushing counters into boxes
and=or clapping with students to help them sound out words?
9. Do you put words on a word wall and have students use the
word wall during reading and writing?
10. Do you prompt students to use their fingers to create spaces
between words when they are writing?

Strategies

I
2

D
1

B
K

RR Certied

0
0

F
1

C
1

A
K

Non-RR Certied

Teachers in the Study

TABLE 4 Teachers Self-Reported Change in Use of Reading Recovery Strategies in Classroom Instruction Following Reading
Recovery Training

332

(Continued)

75%
8%
17%

83%
8%
8%

D
1

B
K

RR Certied

92%
8%
0%

I
2

50%
0%
50%

A
K

33%
0%
67%

C
1

Non-RR Certied

Teachers in the Study

92%
0%
8%

F
1

Note: RR Reading Recovery. The teacher uses the RR strategy more now than before receiving RR training. The teacher uses the RR
strategy less now than before receiving RR training. 0 The teacher uses the RR strategy about the same amount now as before receiving RR
training. Teacher C completed the questionnaire following the 199871999 school year, during which she taught grade one.

11. Do you model stretching words and have students stretch

words in order to help students read and write them?
12. Do you point out and have students find the chunks in words?
Percentage of strategies taught more after RR training
Percentage taught less
Percentage taught about the same

Strategies

TABLE 4

333

1. Do you have students reread a story=book with you, other students

(i.e., chorally or with partners), or at home with parents until it can
be read proficiently=fluently?
2. Do you have students reading several books, some that are familiar
and some that are new?
3. Do you preview new vocabulary and do picture walks with
students when introducing new books?
4. Do you have students unscramble the sentences or words in a
story=message (i.e., do you put each sentence on a pocket chart
card and then have students place each sentence in its
appropriate pocket)?
5. Do you make running records as students read to you?
6. Do you have students make and break words using magnetic
letters(or letters on cards or chips) to develop automatic
recognition of high frequency words?
7. Do you review letter-sound associations and have illustrated
letter charts in the room for students to use when reading
and writing?
8. Do you provide positive feedback when a students does
something right in reading or writing (i.e., after a student sounds
out a word, after a student makes a good invented spelling, after
a student self-corrects a reading error)?

Instructional Practices

A
K

I
2

F
1

C
1

Non-RR Certied

D
1

B
K

RR Certied

Teachers in the Study

TABLE 5 Teachers Self-Reported Change in Use of Reading Recovery Instructional Practices in Classroom Instruction Following
Reading Recovery Training

334

(Continued)

Do you have books in your room that are arranged by RR

level and have students read leveled books that are
matched to their RR level?
Do you send students to RR for remediation and=
or have students participate with you in one-on-one lessons that
are like RR lessons?
Do you explain how to write individual letters?
Do you have students write in response to a story that has been
read and=or explicitly direct students to use some of the phrases
from the story in their writing?
Do you have students write books and transcribe students
written stories into conventional spelling for them?
Do you model the use of and explain the meaning of
punctuation?
Do you have students predict what letters a word begins or
ends with and what other letters they think they hear in between?
Do you have students look hard at words, picture them in their minds, and=or
write and rewrite them so they fluently remember them and their spellings?
Do you question students for strategies to help them problem-solve
tricky words encountered in print?
Percentage of instructional practices used more after RR training
Percentage used less
Percentage used about the same

71%
0%
29%

82%
0%
18%

D
1

B
K

RR Certied

71%
6%
24%

I
2

71%
0%
29%

0
0

A
K

53%
0%
47%

0
0

C
1

0
0

F
1

76%
0%
24%

Non-RR Certied

Teachers in the Study

Note: RR Reading Recovery. The teacher uses the RR instructional practice more now than before receiving RR training. The teacher uses
the RR instructional practice less now than before receiving RR training. 0 The teacher uses the RR instructional practice about the same amount
now as before receiving RR training. Teacher C completed the questionnaire following the 199871999 school year, during which she taught grade one.

17.

16.

15.

14.

13.

11.
12.

10.

9.

Instructional Practices

TABLE 5

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

335

two experienced RR trainers, including the third author, who conrmed

that the 29 practices were consistent with RR techniques. Teachers were
asked to indicate whether they used a particular RR-type strategy or instructional practice during the past school year (199871999), whether they
used it before receiving any RR training, and whether this past school year
they used it more, less, or about the same amount as before RR training.
Teachers additionally were asked to rate how often (daily, weekly, monthly,
or never) they used a particular strategy or instructional practice this past
school year, with their low, average , and high achieving students and in
individual, small group, and whole class instructional formats.

RESULTS
The most important outcome in this study was the observation of classroom teachers using RR practices in their teaching and teaching their
students RR strategies. Thus, the rst and second parts of this results
section summarize the RR practices and strategies that were observed. By
the conclusion of their visits, the observers were convinced that instruction in RR practices and use of RR strategies varied with the grade
taught. Thus, the third part of the results section includes three brief
case studies: one of a kindergarten teacher, one of a grade one teacher,
and one of a grade two teacher. The nal part of the results section
outlines the trends in the teachers questionnaire responses about their
use and change in use of RR strategies and practices following RR
training.

RR Inst ruct ional Pract ices

The teachers were observed using the following RR instructional practices
in their classrooms (see Table 2):

RR-like Individual Lessons

Some teachers had individual students participate in RR-like lessons.

Running Re cords
The teacher made running records as students read.

Leveled Books
Students read books that were leveled according to the RR rating system, with the challenge level of books read by students gradually increasing.

336

A. D. Roehrig et al.

Previewed Book
New books were often introduced by doing a picture walk through the
book. Previewing typically involved mentioning new vocabulary that would
be in the story.

W riting in Response to Re ading

Teachers often had students write in response to reading, using some of
the words or phrases encountered in the story that was just read.

Tra nscription
Teachers transcribed a students written response to a reading into
conventional spelling.

Cut-up Sentences
The teacher cut up a sentence written by the student, and the student
then reassembled it. Sometimes, the teacher had students reassemble a
whole story composed of multiple sentences, each written on a separate
card.

Letter-sound Correspondence Emphasized

The teachers went over letter-name and letter-sound associations. In
most classrooms, students had their own letter-sound chart and were encouraged to use it as they read and wrote. Also, students were asked to
predict the letters that would be at the beginning or ending of words they
heard (e.g., What letter will be at the end of book? What does Monday
start with?). Sometimes students were asked to look at a word just read to
see if the letters in it matched the sounds of the word.

W riting of Individua l Letters

Teachers explained to students how to write individual letters using
movement, words, and the visual form to help guide production.

Re petition to Re member Correct Spellings

Teachers urged students to look hard at words repeatedly in order to
remember the spelling of the words. Students were also taught to write and
rewrite a word in order to learn its spelling.

Punctuation Conventions Taught

Teachers modeled and explained use of punctuation.

Positive Feedback
Students were provided abundant positive feedback when they did
something right during reading.

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

337

RR St rategies
Most critically, the teachers were observed teaching the following RR
strategies in their classrooms (see Table 3):

Self-correcting
Students were encouraged to monitor and self-correct their reading and
writing. That is, they were instructed to look at words they wrote to determine whether they looked right, to nd mistakes that could be corrected, and to determine whether what they read made sense and, if not,
to attempt to correct their reading.

Rereading to Achieve Fluency

Children were encouraged to reread books until they could do so
uently. Sometimes this occurred in small group lessons; sometimes
students reread for classmates or other adults in the classroom; sometimes books were taken home to read to parents. As part of this, students were always reading several books at once: new ones, ones
with which they were somewhat familiar, and others they could read
uently.

Using the W ord W all

The word wall is a bank of high frequency words that teachers used to
facilitate automatic recall in reading and writing (Cunningham, 1995).
Students were encouraged to search the familiar set of words on the wall
when they were uncertain of a word or how to write it.

Searching for Multiple Decoding Cues

Teachers encourage d students to use multiple cues to read and check
the reading of words. That is, the student was taught to use letter cues but
also to pay attention to picture and other semantic context and language
structure cues.

Attending to Chunks in W ords during W ord W ork Lessons

Students were taught to look for chunks in words (i.e., rimes, such as
the -ay in hay, day, and say). This was encouraged by the teacher pointing
out chunks in words, and by asking students to nd particular chunks in
words and to cover parts of words in order to isolate a chunk during the
reading and writing of text.

Stretching W ords to Sound them Out

Students were encouraged to say words slowly (to stretch them), in
order to sound them out and write them.

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

Making Phy sical Movements to Support Re ading

Students were taught physical movements emphasized in RR as aids
to reading. These included pointing to words as they were read, and in
doing so, moving from left to right and top to bottom. Students were
also taught to use their ngers to create a space between words as they
were writing. Some teachers taught students to clap out the sounds in
words. When students did not make such movements or experienced
difculties doing so, the teacher sometimes moved the childs nger for
her or him.

Brief Case St udies of Teaching

As summarized in Tables 2 and 3, the teaching observed in this study
seemed much informed by RR. Both observers agreed that a visitor could
enter these classrooms on any given day and expect to see instruction
that included teaching of the strategies in Table 2 and use of the instructional practices in Table 3. That said, there were qualitative differences in the instruction offered at the three grade levels, differences
reected by the intensity of the RR-like instruction at the three grade
levels. The difference in intensity is obvious by comparing the teaching of
one kindergarten, one grade one, and one grade two teacher.

Kindergarten Teacher B ( Marge)

Kindergarten teacher B, referred to here as Marge, serves in a school
located in a working class section of Madison. The children in her classes
represented the full range of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity in the city.
The March 25, 1999, school day began at 8:30 a.m. as the children
entered the room and assembled on the rug. Some begin reading immediately, for example, a poem on the easel, one read previously in the
class. Once most students have arrived, Marge joins them at the rug,
leading the students through morning meeting and calendar routines. As
part of this, students read many familiar words (e.g., the days of the week).
On many days Marge would have the students chorally reread a poem.
There is usually a morning message written on the board that is read
several times during the morning meeting. During one of the observations,
the message contained the word go, which prompted Marge to remind
students that go was on the word wall. She did the same when the word
is was encountered in the message. When the word cat came up in the
morning message, Marge pointed out that by knowing the at chunk the
students knew a lot of words.
Marge then continued the whole class meeting by picture walking
through a big book that the students would be reading and then having the

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

339

students read with her some words that would be in the book, with these
words written on an easel display. In summary, Marge encouraged rereading for uency, using chunks to recognize words, and using the word
wall during the morning meeting.
After the morning meeting, the class broke up into workshops, with
some children writing little books, others working on a book about the
letter n, and others still working on a sight word exercise. Two adult aides
assisted with the workshops with Marge circulating in the room, offering
assistance and instruction as needed. Strategy instruction occurred often
during this time, with Marge prompting several students to use the word
wall to nd words that could be used in stories being written. Also, Marge
reminded some children to use their nger to make a space between words
when writing, and she modeled and encouraged several students to point to
words as they read them. Many students were observed pointing as they
read without any prompting from Marge. Marge encouraged students to
stretch out the words they wanted to write in order to hear the sounds in
them, with such stretching guiding their writing of words. Rereading of text
was encouraged in several ways, for example, with the students prompted
to reread what they had wrote. The students knew to seek out one of the
aides when they completed writing, with the aide listening attentively as
the student read what she or he had written. Also, there was a bin of old
favorites that students could read when they nished their workshop activity, though they also reread chart poems in the room as well as the
morning message and other texts that were on display in the room. Some
other RR instructional practices included instruction about the printing of
n, with students who were working on little n books getting lots of
practice printing the letter. As students wrote in the three workshops,
Marge provided prompts and mini-lessons about punctuation and capitalization conventions. Also, when students completed writing in any of the
workshops, often Marge would transcribe their writing into conventional
English. In short, practices consistent with RR instruction occurred
throughout a morning lled with reading and writing.
What was very striking about Marges kindergarten was that the pace
was so relaxed, even though all the students seemed to be very engaged.
Although there was some whole group instruction and interaction during
the morning meeting, most of the instruction that students received was in
response to their individual needs.
Although the other two observed kindergartens differed in details,
both included some morning meeting group instruction, and they had more
workshop activities that resulted in one-to-one instruction lled with
strategies emphasized in RR, including rereading, stretching words during
writing, and using chunks to read and write words. These were student
needsdriven kindergartens.

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Grade One Teacher A ( Carey )

January 17, 1997, began in Careys class like most days begin. The students
did the daily calendar, with each student having their own calendar and
responding to Careys questions, such as, How many days in January? One
student, who was particularly in need of help, went to the magnetic black
board and unscrambled plastic letters spelling Friday, and then Carey asked
another student to unscramble a set of magnetic letters spelling January.
This was the rst of a number of opportunities during the day for students to
unscramble plastic letters to spell words, just as students in RR often do.
As part of the morning meeting, Carey had the children do another
exercise common to RR. The students were asked to write as many words
as they knew in ve minutes. As the students did this, Carey suggested
possible words and reminded students to use the word wall to nd words
they knew. Most of the students were able to generate a long list, with most
words on the list spelled correctly and other words represented with good
invented spellings. Carey liberally reinforced students for producing long
lists, with many good for you remarks.
The morning meeting concluded with Carey reading a book about
Martin Luther King, the rst of a number of King connections that day in
anticipation of the Martin Luther King holiday. After the reading, each
student was given a little black-and-white book about King, with Carey
instructing them to preview this little book by looking at the pictures. The
students were instructed to read this book as part of their morning work,
which they did while Carey was meeting with reading groups.
After the morning meeting, Carey began to meet with small groups of
students for reading group. The rst group reread a basal story about
Martin Luther Kings valuing reading. As one student read aloud, the others
followed, pointing to the words being read. Carey reminded students to
keep their eyes on the words. When a student was stumped by a word in
the reading, Carey prompted the youngster rst to look at the rst letter
and began to sound out the word. Thus, when one child hesitated to read
read, Carey asked, what will be the sound at the beginning of the word?
Then, she prompted the child to use his hand to frame the word, which
meant isolate the rime by covering the rst letter of read. The child did so
and correctly read read. There were quite a few interactions during
reading groups when Carey prompted such sounding out of words encountered in the text.
When students made mistakes and then corrected themselves, Carey
pointed out how good it was to reread in reaction to a mistake. When words
were encountered in the text that contained chunks known to the students,
Carey prompted students to frame the word in order to identify the
chunk (e.g., by covering the w in win).

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341

When students succeeded in decoding by framing words and blending

the beginning sound with the sound of the rime, Carey often said something
like, Good, you got it when you stopped and thought about it. Carey
strongly encouraged use of these word analysis strategies, ones emphasized in RR.
After concluding the reading, Carey asked the students to write one
sentence in response to the reading about what they could do to keep Kings
dream alive. As the students wrote, Carey prompted them to use capitalization at the beginning of their sentences and to use their ngers to create
spaces between words. She reminded them that they could use the word
wall to nd words for the story. She provided help on an as-needed basis to
each youngster, for example, providing a mini-lesson on how to make a
particular letter, suggesting that the correct spelling for a word might be
found in a personal dictionary, encouraging another child by saying, Very
good, you remembered the period at the end, or pointing out to a classmate Stretch the word. Let me hear you say it and write it. Once students
nished writing their sentences, they began to reread familiar books.
These activities occurred in all of the small reading groups that Carey
taught. These groups were lled with opportunities to work with and reect
on words (e.g., making all the -op words). Sometimes Carey would cut up
a sentence written by the child and then have the student put the sentence
back together. When new words were encountered, Carey often had the
children spell the word out several times. Although Carey encouraged the
use of multiple strategies for word recognition (i.e., using picture clues,
thinking about the meaning of the story, rereading the text leading up to
the word, reading on, and sounding out), she clearly emphasized sounding
out more than the other clues. For example, when a child encountered
pop, Carey directed, Get your mouth ready to say what?
In general, the most intense instruction in the RR strategies was
observed in grade one, with all the grade one teachers employing many RR
practices in their teaching and liberally teaching their students to use RR
strategies. Carey was presented here because her teaching was about
average in intensity for the grade one teachers as a group, with teachers D
and H more intense than Carey and teachers F and G less intense than
Carey was.

Gra de Two Tea cher J ( Sta cy )

About half of Stacys students were making good progress as readers.
Stacy encouraged some use of RR strategies by these students (e.g.,
pointing to individual words while reading), but for the most part they were
past the point where instruction in beginning reading skills was necessary.
The rest of the class was receiving formal RR on a pullout basis. For the
weakest students in the class, who were all well below grade level, Stacy

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also provided 15-minute individual RR-like lessons as other students in the

class worked independently. These lessons followed the usual RR lesson
sequence of reading a familiar book, followed by a less familiar book, followed by some word work, and concluding with student writing in response
to the reading. The following RR strategies were observed prominently
during these lessons:
Books went home for repeated readings to encourage development of
uency. There was lots of book reading, with a new book introduced daily
and continued reading of the book until a student achieved uency
with it.
Students were encouraged to point to words as they read. Sometimes
students clapped out the syllables in a word.
Stacy reminded students to say words slowly in order to write them.
Stacy reminded students to pay attention to chunks as they read (e.g.,
the th- chunk).
Although students were prompted to use picture and semantic context
cues, sounding out was encouraged more. For example, Stacy often said,
Look at the letters. . . . think about the picture and what would
make sense here. Thus, on one occasion, she remarked, Look at the
rst letter and the picture. When you said, monster, did it match the
letters?
Students were prompted often about noticing whether what they were
reading made sense, with them encouraged to reread if the text as decoded did not make sense.
The following RR instructional practices were also observed:
Stacy asked students to anticipate what letters would be seen in a word
(e.g., What letter do you expect at the beginning of skinny?). There
was much emphasis on individual sounds in words, including extensive
use of Elkonin boxes, which focus student attention on individual
letters and their associated sounds in words. Stacy posed lots of questions that oriented students to letter-sound associations (e.g., How did
you know that word wasnt sand?).
After writing a word, students were asked to look at it to determine,
Does it look right? Also, they were asked to look at correctly spelled
words they had written to, Get it in your head. Sometimes Stacy had
students write a word several times to help them remember it.
Before introducing the new book in the lesson, Stacy would go through it
quickly with the student, pointing out the pictures and talking with the
student about what the book might be about.

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343

Stacy constructed running records during these lessons.

Stacy was very positive with each struggling reader, lavishly praising the
student whenever she or he did something right during reading.
In short, we observed individual lessons in one of the grade two
classrooms that were rich in promoting the strategies emphasized in RR,
with the lessons lled with specic RR instructional practices. There was
not much evidence at the grade two level, however, that the teachers used
the RR elements in their whole group and small group teaching, probably
because many grade two students are well beyond the beginning reading
competencies emphasized in RR.

TEACHERS SELF-REPORTED USE OF RR STRATEGIES

AND INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES BEFORE AND AFTER
RR TRAINING
All the teachers in this study who completed the questionnaire reported
that they used 33% of the RR strategies and 53% of the RR instructional
practices more during the past school year than before they received any
RR training. The non-RR certied teachers, however, tended to report a
smaller increase in their use of the RR strategies following RR in-service
training (see Tables 4 and 5) than did the certied teachers following their
training. This difference makes sense, considering that the training process
that results in RR certication is longer and far more intense than the RR
in-service training received by most of the non-RR certied teachers.
Furthermore, teachers may be faster to learn how to implement the instructional practices than to integrate the teaching of the strategies into
their instruction. What is less clear is the non-RR teachers reports that
they used a larger number of the strategies and practices the same amount
after as before they received any training, as compared to reports by the
RR-certied teachers. This may be because the RR-certied teachers have
a better understanding of the strategies and practices than non-certied
teachers and therefore are clearer about the distinction between their preand post-RR training use of these techniques. Furthermore, we were struck
that some of the teachers who reported a large increase in their use of RR
strategies and techniques (namely Teachers I and F) in fact did not seem to
use them much when we observed them. These trends all converge with
the observational ndings that the implementation of RR-inuenced strategies and practices was the most amorphous in the non-RR-certied
teachers classrooms.
The distinctions between the implementation of RR-inuenced strategies and practices by grade level, student achievement level, and in-

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

structional format were as salient in the teachers questionnaire responses

as they were in the observations (see Figures 1 and 2). From Figure 1, it is
clear that the strategies and practices were used the most with low
achieving grade one students. This makes sense because traditional RR
lessons were developed for and used with this population. A great deal of
strategies and practices are also being used with low, average, and high
achieving kindergartners. This makes sense because the strategies and
practices are well suited for beginning readers and writers. Furthermore,
the strategies and practices are used with grade two students and, in
particular, with average and high achieving grade two students the least.
This makes sense as well because by grade two, most students are wellestablished readers and writers. From Figure 2, it is clear that the greatest
number of strategies and practices are used most often in an individual
instructional format. This is makes sense because RR was developed as a
one-on-one tutoring program. The strategies and practices are also used a
lot in whole class instructional formats, but only in kindergarten and

FIGURE 1 Percentage of Reading Recovery strategies and techniques used with

students of different achievemen t levels in different grades. RR Reading Recovery.
Tabulations were made by collapsing across teachers and completed questionnaire
items. Kindergarten teachers A and B, grade one teachers C, D, and F, and grade
two teacher I responded to the Questionnaire. Teacher C completed the questionnaire following the 199871999 school year, during which she taught grade one.

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345

FIGURE 2 Percentage of Reading Recovery strategies and techniques used in different instructional formats with students in different grades. RR Reading Recovery.
Tabulations were made by collapsing across teachers and completed questionnaire
items. Kindergarten teachers A and B, grade one teachers C, D, and F, and grade two
teacher I responded to the Questionnaire. Teacher C completed the questionnaire
following the 199871999 school year, during which she taught grade one.

grade one. That is, there are usually more beginning readers and writers in
kindergarten and grade one than there are in grade two, and kindergarten
and grade one teachers can benet the most beginners by implementing
the strategies and practices in whole class lessons.

DISCUSSION
Anyone familiar with RR who visited the classrooms included in this study
would have recognized many forms of instruction as familiar (e.g., see
Fountas & Pinnell, 1996; Pinnell & Fountas, 1998, for reviews of many
practices consistent with RR, as practiced in the United States in the late
1990s and as can be practiced in regular classrooms). RR, however, can
include many components, so that knowledge of RR or a reading of manuals

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A. D. Roehrig et al.

such as those authored by Fountas and Pinnell does not provide certain
knowledge of just which reading strategies and reading instructional practices would be most prevalent in the regular classroom teaching of RRtrained teachers. What this study established was that a sample of teachers
who had participated in one school systems RR program used many RR-like
instructional practices and strategies in their regular classroom instruction.
Why do we think that the ndings reported here might be of general
interest? First, the reading strategies emphasized by the teachers we observed not only are consistent with strategies taught in RR; they are the
strategies emphasized in RR. Thus, Fountas and Pinnell (1996, Chapter 12)
emphasized ve reading strategies that should be encouraged as part of RR,
all of which were observed in this study. They felt that students should
reread to the point of uency, and we saw that encouraged in the classrooms we visited. Fountas and Pinnell argued that it was important to
encourage control of reading, including by pointing during reading, and we
observed students being taught to control their reading using physical
movements. The teachers we observed encouraged students to use multiple sources of information to read and write words, including sounding
them out by stretching them, looking for chunks in words, using letterlevel cues in combination with semantic and syntactic context cues (i.e.,
multiple cues), and self-monitoring and correcting, which we consolidated
in Table 1 as self-correction (i.e., self-monitoring and self-correction seem
tightly tied). The only strategy in our Table 2 that was not directly emphasized in Fountas and Pinnells (1996) chapter on the teaching of strategies was use of the word wall (Cunningham, 1995). Even so, there are
many references in Fountas and Pinnell (1996) and Pinnell and Fountas
(1998) that are consistent with teaching students to use tools such as the
word wall strategically in order to learn high frequency words and facilitate
automatic recall in reading and writing. In short, we observed much that
was consistent with the conclusion that the teachers transferred reading
strategies emphasized in RR to their regular classroom teaching. That these
were embedded in many other classroom practices consistent with RR (see
Table 2) increases condence in the conclusion that RR training was a
formative experience for these teachers, one that resulted in very different
teaching than they would have been doing in the absence of such training.
A possible criticism of this research is that there was no control
condition, no sampling of primary-level teachers not trained in RR. Our
counter is that this study took place in the context of a much larger research program that has involved observation of many grade one classrooms (Pressley et al., 2001; Wharton-McDonald, Pressley, & Hampston,
1998). Although we have occasionally seen grade one classrooms in which
the strategies and instructional practices documented in this investigation
were observed, in every one of those cases the teacher had had RR training.

Reading Recovery in the Classroom

347

We have never seen the constellation of practices and strategies summarized in Tables 2 and 3 in the teaching of a teacher not previously exposed to
RR. Sometimes individual practices from Table 2 and individual strategies
from Table 3 were observed in the classrooms of teachers not experienced
in RR, but there has not been a single instance of a non-RR-trained teacher
evidencing the majority of the Tables 2 and 3 strategies and practices.
Moreover, all of the teachers in this study who completed the questionnaire
about their use of RR instructional practices and strategies before and after
receiving RR training, whether it was formal, informal, or in-service based,
indicated that they used at least 33% of the RR techniques more after
exposure to RR.
Although the number of teachers we studied was small, we offer the
tentative conclusion that RR training has a greater impact on regular instruction when the teacher is at the kindergarten or grade one level. For
the most part, the kindergarten and grade one classes we observed seemed
permeated with elements of RR, in contrast to the grade two classrooms. In
fact, at grade two, the only extensive encouragement of the RR instructional practices and strategies was in one of the two classrooms, and then
usually only during individual tutorials with weak readers. That RR-type
instruction would be observed more in kindergarten and grade one makes
sense, however, since RR is lled with the beginning reading competencies
that children need to master as part of very beginning reading. Normallyachieving grade two students should be well beyond the skills emphasized
in RR. However, we were impressed with in-class individual lessons Teacher
J delivered in her grade two class, with her tutorials with struggling grade
two readers making it obvious that there is a potential role for RR-like
instruction in grade two.
Does the type of teaching we observed make any difference with
respect to the reading achievement of students? This study is silent with
respect to that issue, although we think it a reasonable hypothesis that
transferring RR strategies and practices to the regular classroom would
have positive effects on achievement. Most relevant to this point, the
rst-grade instruction we observed was similar in many ways to the type
of instruction that Pinnell et al. (1994) documented as effective in
promoting grade one reading achievement in regular classrooms. Given
that RR teachers are transforming their regular classroom instruction in
response to their RR training, and given the numbers of teachers who
are now receiving RR training, there is plenty of motivation for careful
study of the effects on student achievement of grade one instruction
rich in the practices and strategies emphasized in RR and plenty of
reason to study how teachers transfer what they learned in RR to
the regular classroom and the effects produced by that instructional
transfer.

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