Welcome

Reading Recovery,^® Descubriendo La Lectura & Literacy Lessons™
Essential Componenets of a Comprehensive Literacy Model

The Reading Recovery Center for Literacy at National Louis University partners with a growing national network of university centers. This partnership supports school districts in achieving shared goals related to school-wide renewal. Collaborative university research projects are being designed to improve educational practices and policies most likely to influence student achievement.

Reading Recovery^®/Descubriendo La Lectura (DLL) is a professional development design within a comprehensive approach to whole school improvement which includes effective classroom, small group individual literacy instruction. Research has shown that the lowest achieving first grade children need individually designed literacy lessons. Some need continued supplemental less intensive help in the form of small group intervention.

Literacy Lessons™ professional development aims to prepare Special Education and ESL Teachers who work with Grade 2-4 students who are struggling with the beginning phases of literacy learning.  Instruction is designed to help these students acquire an early literacy processing system that will allow them to profit from small group instruction. 

Systematically aligning classroom instruction with evidence based interventions, results in the greatest possible student achievement gains. The results of the Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy (PCL) model has had dramatic results in high-poverty, low achieving schools, as well as schools with average and above average socioeconomic status. The results have been observed in districts across the United States.

Professional development that is:

• Embedded into a school reform effort that links curriculum, assessment, and standards to professional learning
• Collaborative and collegial
• Intensive and sustained over time
  Darling-Hammond, L. and Richardson, N. (2009). Teacher learning: What matters? Educational Leadership, Vol.66, No. 5

Click here for additional information about the research on Reading Recovery.

Professional Development for Special Education and ELL Teachers

       Professional Development for Special Ed and ELL teachers

Research supports
    Reading Recovery's effectiveness

CPRE released its evaluation of one of the most ambitious and well-documented expansions of a U.S. instructional curriculum. The rigorous independent evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3) scale-up of Reading Recovery, a literacy intervention for struggling first graders, was a collaboration between CPRE and the Center for Research on Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware.

The CPRE/CRESP evaluation revealed that students who participated in Reading Recovery significantly outperformed students in the control group on measures of overall reading, reading comprehension, and decoding.

• In a randomized controlled trial of 6,888 students, 1st grade students who participated in Reading Recovery for 12-20 weeks showed reading improvement equal to 18 percentage points on the ITBS Total Reading assessment. Their growth was more than 130 percent higher than the national average growth rate for 1st graders. Both English-language learners and rural students showed equally strong benefits.  Click here for the full report.

Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant
Reading Recovery Scaling up What Works Project

Reports are now available.  Click here for more information.