Reading Recovery

When I watch children who have completed their Reading Recovery programme and are now being monitored and supported in class, I wish we had undertaken this programme many years ago. There are several children whose behaviour deteriorated, largely due to frustration and their inability to fully access the curriculum, despite numerous intervention programmes and additional support. I am convinced that for these children their overall educational attainment, attitudes to work and school would have been different if they had received the quality and structured intervention of Reading Recovery when they were in Year One.

Reading Recovery has been an invaluable programme for Minster CEP School in meeting the educational needs of our children. Through appointing a Reading Recovery Teacher, we can identify and address the needs of our children at an early point in their school life, and not allow the gap between the child and their peers to grow even larger. Due to our expectations that our Reading Recovery Teacher has a wider impact than on just the Year 1 children she works with (many of whom come with Pupil Premium funding), she also manages our Better Reading Partnership work, training TAs and identifying children for the programme. She also raises the profile of Reading across the school and there is no doubt this is evidenced in the improvement of our reading scores.

Achievement in reading across the school is good because the school has invested in a good quality reading programme and additional adults make time to read with pupils individually and in smaller ability groups.