Reading Recovery Celebrates Ten Years In Anguilla

Reading recovery is an early intervention programme, designed for children who are having difficulty reading and writing after one year of school. It has been existent in the primary schools since 1998 and to date 364 children have been given a second opportunity to succeed.

This is a very noteworthy programme in Anguilla that endeavours to make an extremely positive and paramount impact on the lives of children. The ability to read and write is a basic capacity most of us take for granted but in essence it is a very daunting exercise that takes an entire lifetime to master. Children who are deficient in this area will not have a fighting chance to be successful in the academic arena, and the work of Mrs. Catherine Proctor, Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, and the other teachers, is to be commended and celebrated.

The Reading Recovery Operation is highly organized. Each year, teachers meet at the Reading Recovery Centre at the Teacher’s Resource Centre. This Centre is equipped with a special viewing mirror. It enables the teachers to observe children through a one-way screen and analyze and discuss their reading and writing behaviours. The Anguillian was invited to view one of these sessions. At every session there are two lessons. After the lessons, teachers meet with the demonstrating teachers for reflective discussion. The Reading Recovery Teacher Leader at this point guides the discussion, raises challenging questions and uses the observed behaviour of the child and teacher to help the group develop skills in describing, analyzing and making inferences. In this way, the teachers begin to develop their own theories grounded in the specifics of teaching.

Students are given a battery of five tests and the four lowest scoring children are invited to join the programme for twelve to twenty weeks depending on their success rate. Most children finish successfully in ten weeks. In total, there are fourteen teachers and, at the moment, six additional teachers are being trained to help children overcome their difficulties with reading and writing. Each class with the child begins with familiar reading and then progresses to the child reading a book that was previously introduced. While the child reads, the teacher takes a record of the difficulties with words and focuses on how to help the child overcome those areas of difficulty. After that, the child does letter and word work on a dry erase board and that is followed up with the child actually writing a story. The very last activity is the introduction of new material that will be reviewed once again during the next session.

While viewing the teachers in action, it was apparent that they are all very passionate about their jobs. The excitement on the teacher’s face when the child was successful was shared by the other teachers behind the mirror as well as the Teacher Leader. Reading Recovery celebrates 10 years in Anguilla and without a doubt the work the teacher’s are doing is making a huge difference in the lives of children.
- Jason Allen