reading recovery homework

Reading Recovery lesson and response to intervention

Each Reading Recovery lesson incorporates the five components identified by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act as essential in a comprehensive instructional program in reading. The five components are:

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics instruction
• Fluency instruction,
• Vocabulary instruction
• Text comprehension instruction

Accelerated learning is possible because Reading Recovery teachers base their instruction on carefully documented daily observations of what each child already knows about reading and writing. This is an efficient approach that allows all future instruction to work from the child's strengths.

There are two possible outcomes after a full series of Reading Recovery lessons, both positive:

• The child makes accelerated progress and continues to progress thereafter with classroom instruction. (Nationally about 75% of children successfully complete lessons.)
• Additional evaluation is recommended and further action is initiated to help the child continue making progress. This is a positive outcome, because Reading Recovery's diagnostic teaching helps identify children who need more help and provides a documented record of the child's knowledge and strength as a base for future learning.

A key premise of Reading Recovery is that early intervention in first grade is critical. Research shows that children who fall behind in Grade 1 tend to remain below grade level in later years.

Early intervention is important because the gap between the lowest and highest performing children is narrow in lower grades but widens later in elementary school.

Although all children progress through their Reading Recovery lessons, a few do not make the accelerated progress needed to succeed without extra help. These children may be recommended for additional intervention.

Reading Recovery has been reconstructed in Spanish as Descubriendo la Lectura. It has also been reconstructed in French.

Response to intervention

Contribution of reading recovery professional development to a comprehensive system of learning supports.

Reading Recovery is used as part of a systemic intervention model for academics. Classroom teachers who are trained in Reading Recovery provide high quality instruction and daily progress monitoring of children in Tier I within a Response to Intervention (RTI) model.

Within that model, children who do not make progress with classroom instruction (Tier I) are provided Reading Recovery as an intensive intervention (Tier II) before any referral to special education (Tier III). Literacy Lessons professional development can enhance instructions at this top tier.

Because Reading Recovery teachers typically work as Title I teachers or classroom teachers during the other half of their teaching assignments, Reading Recovery professional development benefits Tier I (Classroom) instruction and more intensive one-to-one instruction (Reading Recovery) which follows in Tier II.

Reading Recovery

Offering a preventative intervention for young children learning literacy..

Posted November 21, 2019 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

By Tammy Mills, Ph.D., University of Maine

Teaching young children to read and write, especially if they experience difficulty, is a complicated task. Each child brings a variety of experiences and unique backgrounds to the endeavor. In spite of the advances made in teaching all students to read, some students struggle with literacy learning and require early intervention. If children experience difficulty, leveraging their backgrounds and experiences, building on their strengths, and understanding their areas of weakness takes on a sense of urgency.

Diverse approaches exist to teach students to read (e.g., Allington, 2002; Lose, 2007; NICHD National Reading Panel Report, 2000; Shanahan, 2003, 2004). Some literacy scholars prefer a more linear approach that emphasizes direct instruction of systematic phonics (NICHD, 2000). Others favor a complex, integrated approach; one that includes the development of students’ phonics knowledge and skills, and understands literacy learning as a process of problem-solving whereby students draw on their prior knowledge of language, texts, words, and the world (e.g., Allington, 2002; Clay, 2005, 2015, 2016; D’Agostino & Murphy, 2004).

Reading Recovery (RR) is an intervention that takes a complex view of literacy learning and seeks to make the most of a student’s knowledge and skills. RR is a literacy intervention that helps first-grade students reach the average of their class within 12-20 weeks (What Works Clearinghouse [WWC], 2013). Specifically, RR is a preventative intervention designed to facilitate the accelerated literacy learning of first-grade children who experience difficulty with literacy learning and seeks to accomplish two goals :

• Accelerate the learning of most first-grade children who struggle with literacy learning and help them develop an independent system for continued learning; and
• Identify those children who may need further evaluation and long-term support (Denton, 2006).

In a review of literacy programs conducted by the federal government’s What Works Clearinghouse (WWC, 2013), RR emerged as the only intervention that makes a significant difference in reading achievement for young children. The question could be, then, what works about RR? Students’ accelerated literacy learning appears to depend on the complex network of continued teacher professional learning, successful implementation, and ongoing research, development, and evaluation that make up the broader system of RR (e.g., May, Sirinides, Gray, & Goldsworthy, 2016). Further, aforementioned scholars contend there are no simple answers when it comes to teaching reading and writing to young children. Rather, RR suggests that:

• Literacy teaching and learning are complex, and sometimes hard, especially for children who have difficulty learning to read and write (Burroughs & Douetil, 2007);
• There are no silver bullets, no “teacher replacements,” no quick or easy apps by which children can learn to read and write (Lose, 2007);
• A knowledgeable, skilled teacher, using evidence-based teaching procedures, can follow a child’s lead, and create an authentic child-centered approach to learning (Taylor, 2018);
• Investment in the ongoing development of teacher knowledge pays off in student achievement (Taylor, 2018);
• A complex theory of literacy processing helps researchers and educators to understand how the development of literacy changes over time for each child and how literacy learning can be accelerated in children experiencing difficulty with learning to read and write (Clay, 2015); and
• Literacy teaching and learning are about problem-solving. As children read to understand meaningful messages from print, they use many sources of information. They come to conclusions about what they are reading by checking sources of information against each other, a problem-solving process (Clay, 2016).

A complex view of literacy learning such as RR focuses researchers and educators on how children reach common outcomes (an effective system of reading and writing) by different paths (Clay, 2016).

Thus, children will draw simultaneously on many sources of information to make sense of text, including their knowledge of the language, print, and the world. A complex view of literacy teaching means teachers develop an understanding of the unique experiences and needs of each child and use those experiences to help the child develop a system for successful, independent literacy learning.

To that end, RR teachers teach RR students in a one-on-one context, intervening when necessary, using evidence-based teaching procedures, and focusing on leveraging the child’s strengths to mitigate weaknesses at the moment of intervention. RR teachers closely observe children and record literacy behavior and activity as children read and write text to assess the sources of information they use throughout the problem-solving process. RR teachers base their teaching decisions on their close observation of each child and aim to help each child become a more efficient and strategic problem solver. By prompting for and/or demonstrating problem-solving strategies that will accelerate a child’s learning when reading print, RR teachers help children become more efficient, productive problem solvers of texts.

The accelerated progress of RR is rooted in the complex theory of literacy processing and the constantly evolving relationships among the RR child, the RR teacher, RR teacher learning, RR teaching procedures, and a system of ongoing, sensitive observation. During a typical RR tutoring session, the child reads and writes continuous text under the close observation of the RR teacher. Ongoing teaching decisions are aimed at accelerating the learning of each child and are based on the teacher’s close observations of a child’s reading and writing activity with continuous text.

The RR teacher enacts teaching decisions throughout a tutoring session by implementing specific, evidence-based RR teaching procedures (Clay, 2016). Examples of teaching procedures include prompting the child, if necessary, for specific activity in order to initiate or to scaffold the child’s attempt at problem-solving. For example, if a child miscues the word “yes” for the word “you,” the RR teacher might say, “That word looks right because it begins with a Y. Look all the way through to the end of that word and think about what would sound right.”

Other procedures include sorting magnetic letters to promote a child’s noticing of specific features of particular letters, help a child learn onset and rime, and learn to apply what they know or nearly know about words to solve new words. In this way, the RR teacher accelerates child learning by using a deep understanding of literacy processing theory, a knowledge of what that particular child might need at a particular moment, and an ability to flexibly apply RR teaching procedures.

The use of such a child-centered approach is successful when teachers base their teaching decisions on their sensitive observations of child behavior (Clay, 2005). Those observations begin with the use of the Observation Survey (OS; Clay, 2015).

RR students are identified for the intervention through the administration of the OS, a multifaceted, standardized assessment that uses national norms for performance at the beginning, middle, and end of first grade. The OS is administered in a one-on-one setting during which a teacher closely observes the behavior and activity of a child when they complete a variety of literacy tasks. The individualized administration of the OS gives teachers an opportunity to observe and record the unique literacy behaviors of each child. In this way, the OS provides teachers with meaningful, actionable information regarding the complex processes children use to problem solve and gain meaningful messages from text. As a child progresses in RR, teachers use the OS and other observation RR observation protocols and materials to continuously hone their skills.

Despite literacy activities being grounded in sound theoretical principles, the translation of theory to actionable practice can be difficult. Observations of literacy activities provide opportunities for RR teachers to delve deep insight into the multiple ways each child develops literacy abilities and to learn about the different knowledge and skills each child brings to the task of problem-solving.

With the guidance of a more knowledgeable other (RR teacher leader ), RR teachers connect theory to practice by observing each other teach students in two settings, the tutorial setting within each other’s schools, and the clinical setting. The clinical setting includes a one-way glass behind which a RR teacher and student engage in a lesson. On one side of the glass, the RR teacher leader and fellow RR teachers engage in ongoing dialog about the RR lesson taking place on the other side. In each context (tutorial and behind the glass), RR teachers use inquiry and discussion to explore the theoretical rationale behind teaching decisions and examine resulting child outcomes. In this way, RR teachers operationalize reflection by continuously deconstructing and examining their use of RR protocols and teaching procedures.

In designing RR, Clay (2015) alluded to the learning of both teachers and children, “If literacy teaching only brings a simple theory to a set of complex activities, then the learner has to bridge the gaps created by the theoretical simplification” (p. 105). Clay felt it was necessary to expose teachers and children to the complexities that underlie the problem-solving processes of literacy learning. She feared that simplifying complexity (e.g., through the use of scripted programs that emphasize one feature of literacy learning or linear views that assume all children develop literacy in one way) would leave teachers (and children) to their own devices to fill in the gaps. That is, they would create processes for problem-solving based on their own theories of how things work. In doing so, they run the risk of drawing murky conclusions (Clay, 2016).

According to Clay (2016), when complex theories of literacy learning are used to create clear teaching procedures, protocols, and materials, design ongoing professional development, provide opportunities to reflect on teaching decisions and child outcomes, teachers and children are able to learn literacy through expanded, theoretically sound systems for independent problem-solving.

Allington, R. L. (2002). Big brother and the national reading curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.

Burroughs-Lange, S. & Douetil, J. (2007). Literacy progress of young children from poor urban settings: A Reading Recovery comparison study. Literacy Teaching and Learning, 12 (1), 19-46.

Clay, M. M. (2005). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Auckland, New Zealand: Pearson.

Clay, M. M. (2015). Change over time in children’s literacy development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (2016). Literacy lessons designed for individuals (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Denton, C. A. (2006). Validity, reliability, and utility of the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement. Reading Research Quarterly, 41 (1), 8-34

D’Agostino, J. V., & Murphy, J. A. (2004). A meta-analysis of Reading Recovery in United States schools. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26 (1), 23-38.

Lose, M. K. (2007). A child’s response to intervention requires a responsive teacher of reading. The Reading Teacher, 61 (3), 276-279.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read. An evidence based assessment of the scientific research on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups (NIH Publication No 00-4754). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved November 11, 2019, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/report.htm .

May, H., Sirinides, P., Gray, A., & Goldsworthy, H. (2016). Reading Recovery: An evaluation of the four-year i3 scale-up. Retrieved from Consortium for Policy Research in Education: https://www.cpre.org/reading-recovery-evaluation-four-year-i3-scale .

Taylor, L. (2018). Taking reflection to a higher level: Teacher engagement in intellectual practice. Journal of Reading Recovery, 18 (1), 17-25.

United States Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences What Works Clearing House (2013). Reading Recovery. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/EvidenceSnapshot/420 .

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Getting Started with Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is implemented by education districts and consortia that are affiliated with Reading Recovery University Training Centers (UTC) in the United States and with Regional Institutes (RI) in Canada. Typically one or more school systems decide to implement Reading Recovery and employ one or more Teacher Leaders to train Teachers for Reading Recovery. In cases where a school district is too small to establish a teacher training site, administrators can contact a UTC or nearby teacher training sites about the possibility of affiliation.

The decision to implement Reading Recovery with fidelity is a collaborative partnership among teachers, administrators, parents, and university personnel. Strong coordination and communication among groups contribute to the success of any implementation.

For additional information, please see Establishing a Reading Recovery Site.

Find a regional university training center/regional institute

Contact RRCNA for a referral

Find a teacher leader in your state (coming soon)

Resources To Assist You in Your Journey

Is Reading Recovery right for your school? Find additional resources available in our book store:

Updated in 2022, this guide connects self-assessment tools with the strengths of Reading Recovery Teachers to build professional learning communities that support high-quality literacy instruction.  The goal is to create, initiate, and sustain a comprehensive literacy design within school contexts. Self-assessment and planning forms in each section guide school literacy teams or school staff in-service training.

A Site Coordinator’s Guide to the Effective Implementation of Reading Recovery

Written for individuals new to Reading Recovery, A Site Coordinator’s Guide to the Effective Implementation of Reading Recovery provides a deep introduction to the intervention, our philosophies, and how to plan for implementation of Reading Recovery at the school and district levels.

A Principal’s Guide to Reading Recovery

A well-used reference for Reading Recovery implementations across America, A Principal’s Guide to Reading Recovery has been transformed for today’s busy principals with easy-to-read information at a glance. Chapter titles are posed as questions that principals might ask as they implement Reading Recovery.

Establishing a teacher training site

Establishing a teacher training site requires a strong, long-term commitment from the sponsoring district or consortium. All stakeholders need information about the purposes, rationales, and processes involved in Reading Recovery. Key understandings include the need to serve the lowest-achieving children first, to be economical with time in selecting and teaching children, and to work towards full implementation—which means allocating sufficient staffing and teaching time to serve the most at-risk children in the first-grade cohort.

Early implementation steps

• Send a representative team on a fact-finding visit to a UTC where Reading Recovery teacher leaders are trained. If possible, visit established sites in your local area. Build understanding and support for Reading Recovery implementation at all levels within your district.
• Select one or more experienced and highly qualified (master’s degree required) individuals to participate in the teacher leader training program for one academic year. After the training year, this person will train Reading Recovery teachers for your site. In some areas, it is possible to employ an active, trained Reading Recovery teacher leader.
• Establish a “behind-the-glass” area with one-way glass for teaching sessions and adequate space for follow-up class discussions.
• Plan for the teacher leader to train 8 to 12 Reading Recovery teachers a year. Determine a procedure to select highly qualified and successful teachers for training and support the teacher leader in establishing a training class.
• Arrange weekly training sessions for teachers-in-training across an academic year. Work with your affiliated UTC to determine possibilities for graduate credit for teachers-in-training. All Reading Recovery-trained teachers received graduate-level training, sometimes through their affiliated UTC, and sometimes through a local college.
• Make necessary staff arrangements to enable Reading Recovery teachers to teach four students in daily 30-minute lessons. Active Reading Recovery teachers fulfill other job responsibilities for the remainder of the day (e.g., Title I or small-group teacher, kindergarten teacher, shared classroom teacher, special education teacher, English as a second language (ESL) teacher, staff developer/literacy coach).
• Make the necessary staff arrangements to enable the Teacher Leader to teach children, support teachers, and manage the Reading Recovery implementation at the district or site level.
• Purchase books and supplies. The startup cost for non-consumable materials is approximately $2,500 per Reading Recovery teacher.
• Comply with the U.S. or Canadian standards and guidelines for training, data collection, and implementation. These standards protect your investment and must be followed to maintain active Reading Recovery status.

Read more about Implementation

Implementation overview

Comprehensive literacy plan

Effective implementation

Standards and Guidelines

School resources

Response to intervention

THE JOURNAL OF READING RECOVERY

Spring 2024.

Constructing a More Complex Neural Network for Working on Written Language That Learns to Extend Itself by Carol A. Lyons

Reading Recovery IS the Science(s) of Reading and the Art of Teaching by Debra Semm Rich

Predictions of Progress: Charting, Adjusting, and Shaping Individual Lessons by Janice Van Dyke and Melissa Wilde

Teachers Designing for Context: Using Integrity Principles to Design Early Literacy Support in Aotearoa New Zealand by Rebecca Jesson, Judy Aitken, and Yu Liu

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A foundation for their future.

Individual students work one-to-one with a specially trained teacher for only 12 to 20 weeks and receive daily 30-minute lessons. After a full series of lessons, about 72% of students achieve grade-level standard.

AFTER COMPLETING LESSONS, STUDENTS CAN:

Read increasingly more difficult texts at an instructional level, expanding their power to learn from their own efforts and solve problems as they read and write.

Compose increasingly complex messages using resources to solve new words: students monitor and edit their work, knowing when and how to get help.

Continue to learn with supportive classroom instruction.

Reading Recovery requires ongoing data collection for each and every child who has lessons. Because accountability is a key part of Reading Recovery, administrators receive annual reports at the teacher, school, and district level.

READING RECOVERY IN ACTION

Growth with Reading Recovery

Progress in Action

High Frequency Words

Facilitator Notes

High frequency words are often – usually –  a major impediment to the progress of struggling readers.  Therefore, we work on them in all parts of guided reading, and they are discussed in each section of this module.  During reading, we closely observe children’s reading of high frequency words in text, and support readers in developing automaticity with them.

How do we help struggling readers build automaticity with high frequency words during and after reading?

Growth Over Time:  What can we learn from one teacher approach to a reader’s difficulty with high frequency words?

See also Example 1, Step 2: High Frequency Words in Additional Analysis of Running Records (Instructional Decision-Making Section)

Video: High Frequency Words 1 (Level 4) ; Transcript , Maryann McBride, First Grade

Video: High Frequency Words 2 (Level 3) ; Transcript , Katie Babb, First Grade

Video: High Frequency Words 3 (Level 10) ; Transcript , CC Bates, First Grade

Video: High Frequency Words 4 (Level 10) ; Transcript , CC Bates, First Grade

Growth Over Time:  What can we learn from a teacher’s approach to a reader’s difficulty with high frequency words?

Ashinique Owens, Reading Recovery/Intervention Teacher at Nevitt Forest Elementary School, Anderson, SC, shares the progress of a second grade reader struggling with high frequency words as she moves from Level 16-24 text.

Supporting Documents: HF Words Running Records and Notes

Video: Assessing the Problem ; Transcript , Ashinique Owens, Second Grade

Teaching for High Frequency Words ; Transcript , Ashinique Owens, Second Grade

Observing Progress ; Transcript , Ashinique Owens, Second Grade

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Home > Blog > What is the Reading Recovery Program?

What is the Reading Recovery Program?

July 14, 2020.

The Reading Recovery program was established in the United States in 1984 to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in the first grade . The goal of this program is to help these struggling readers understand complex concepts and develop the crucial skills that they need to become better readers.

If your first grader is struggling to keep up with their classmates in reading, it’s important to understand the basics of the Reading Recovery program.

What Does the Reading Recovery Program Entail?

First graders who participate in the Reading Recovery program will work one-on-one with a teacher who is specially trained to help struggling readers. These teachers do not take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teach reading. Instead, they will create customized lessons based on each child’s unique needs.

Each lesson may consist of a wide variety of activities, including:

• Reading books that are familiar to the student
• Writing stories
• Reading a new book per day
• Re-reading the new book from the previous day’s lesson
• Using magnetic letters to create new words
• Learning more about letters, sounds, and spelling patterns

Each lesson will give students an opportunity to work on many different types of reading skills, including phonemic awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension .

How Long Is A Reading Recovery Lesson?

The students who participate in this program receive 30 minutes of one-on-one instruction with a specially trained teacher every school day.

The program can last anywhere from 12 to 20 weeks . If a student demonstrates that they are capable of meeting reading expectations for their grade level , they will no longer need to participate in the program.

What is the Observation Survey?

The observation survey is a tool that is used throughout Reading Recovery to help teachers assess each student’s skills and progress. This survey is designed to assess six reading skills, including:

• Letter identification: This involves determining which letters the child knows and how they are able to identify them.
• Word test: This is an assessment of the child’s current vocabulary.
• Print concepts: The teacher will assess how much the child understands about the way that words are used and represented in print .
• Writing vocabulary: This is an assessment of how the child is able to incorporate words from their personal vocabulary into their writing .
• Hearing and recording sounds: This is an assessment of the child’s phonemic awareness skills .
• Text reading: The teacher will observe and record how the child performs when reading continuous sections of text.

Every student who participates in the program is assessed before they begin, when they complete the program , and at the end of their school year. This helps teachers track each student’s progress throughout the program.

Is Reading Recovery Effective?

The Reading Recovery program has proven to be a very effective way to help first graders overcome their reading and writing difficulties . Approximately three-quarters of the students who complete the 12 to 20-week program are able to meet or exceed their grade-level reading expectations . Research has shown that these students tend to continue to improve upon these skills and perform well on standardized tests in later years.

Research has shown that this program can also reduce four different types of achievement gaps , which are significant differences in academic performances between different groups of students. The Reading Recovery program has been proven to reduce:

• The gap between low-performing and average-performing reading and writing students.
• The gap between higher-income and poverty-level students.
• The gap between minority and non-minority students.
• The gap between non-native and native English speaking students.

There’s no doubt that this program is effective. But unfortunately, some children will not see results with the Reading Recovery program. When this happens, specially trained teachers recommend further classroom support to meet the needs of these students. This ensures that these students continue to get the help they need to improve upon their reading and writing skills even when the Reading Recovery program is over.

How Parents Can Help Struggling Readers—With or Without the Reading Recovery Program

The Reading Recovery program is not available to every struggling reader. But there is another way for kids to get the one-on-one instruction they need to become better readers: the Readability app.

The Readability app uses responsive speech recognition and artificial intelligence technology to interact directly with the reader by correcting their pronunciation mistakes and asking them questions about the text. Download the Readability app today to start your free 7-day trial and connect your child to their very own digital tutor.

Email: [email protected] Phone: 888-850-3997

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Each night, every Reading Recovery student will bring home a book to read that evening. It is a self-selected book that they have already read, at least twice, during school time. It might be one of their most recent books or it might be a book that they worked on 3-4 weeks ago. Whether they pick a newer book that is a little tricky, or an older book that seems quite easy, there are great benefits in reading these familiar books. Repeated readings of books that seem easy is invaluable in helping children to build fluency and confidence. This book is returned to school the following day.

Each child will also bring home a "story puzzle". This will be a sentence that they have written during their lesson. It is then written by me on a strip and cut up for them to rebuild. At home they need to put the sentence together again with a grown up. The sentence is glued into their Homework Writing Book.  This homework writing book is returned to school each day.

I ask that you complete the Homework Log each night so that I can see how often your child is completing his/her homework.  Each child is on a reward system for homework and they can earn a trip to the treasure box after completing 5 assignments.

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Reading Recovery ©  is a licensed, school-based, short-term, early literacy intervention.  It is designed for children aged around six, who are the lowest literacy achievers after their first year of school. Reading Recovery © involves intensive one-to-one lessons for 30 minutes a day with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher.

This series of lessons is  individually designed  for each child, based on moment by moment observations and skilled teacher decisions.

The goal is for children to become effective readers and writers , able to work with

in the average band of their class at age-appropriate levels of literacy.

The RR teacher creates opportunities for the child to problem solve and provides just enough support to help the child develop strategic behaviors to use on texts in both reading and writing.

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Change Plan

The change plan worksheet captures and organizes essential elements of a plan, including desired changes, reasons, steps, helpers, success indicators, and obstacles.

An awareness and understanding of urges is crucial to recovery. One way to understand urges is by recording them. After a few entries, participants may notice patterns and similarities about their urges. The log then becomes a road map that will help them to anticipate situations and emotions that may trigger urges and  plan ways to avoid recognized triggers or distract themselves from the urge until it passes.

Setting SMART Goals

It’s important to make sure goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed.

Lifestyle Balance Pie

The lifestyle balance pie helps us to visually map out which areas of life are important to us and which areas need greater attention.

DEADS: Deny/Delay; Escape; Avoid/Accept/Attack; Distract; Substitute

DEADS is an acronym that stands for "Deny/Delay," "Escape," "Avoid/Accept/Attack," "Distract," and "Substitute." This tool is designed to equip individuals with strategies to combat the immediate demands of addictive urges, providing practical steps to diminish their power and influence.

DIBs: Disputing Irrational Beliefs

In the realm of addiction recovery, the battleground is often not in the physical world but within the confines of our own minds. SMART Recovery, a program grounded in empowering individuals to break free from the chains of addictive behaviors, underscores the importance of mental liberation through the DIBs tool. An acronym for "Disputing Irrational Beliefs," DIBs is a central pillar in the SMART Recovery approach, guiding individuals through the process of identifying and challenging irrational beliefs that fuel addictive behaviors. This article illuminates the transformative power of DIBs in the journey toward sustainable recovery.

DISARM: Destructive Images and Self-Talk Awareness and Refusal Method

Recovery from addiction is often visualized as a battlefield where one's inner demons are the foe. These inner enemies come armed with deceptive allure, masquerading as friends or saviors, promising relief, pleasure, or escape. But, as anyone on the journey to recovery knows, yielding to these false promises leads only to more suffering. SMART Recovery arms individuals in this battle with an arsenal of tools, one of the most potent being DISARM - Destructive Images and Self-talk Awareness and Refusal Method.

HOV: Hierarchy of Values

In the throes of addiction, it's not uncommon for individuals to feel disconnected from what truly matters most to them. Activities, relationships, and principles that once held significant importance might have taken a back seat to the pursuit of addictive behaviors. SMART Recovery's Hierarchy of Values (HOV) tool is designed to bridge this gap, helping you reconnect with your authentic self and realign your daily actions with your deepest values.

Role-Playing/Rehearsal

When we think of role-playing, we might imagine actors rehearsing for a play. They try out different lines and actions, preparing for their performance. But did you know that a similar strategy can be super helpful for people working to overcome addictive behaviors? This strategy, known as the Role-play/Rehearsal tool in SMART Recovery, is a powerful way to get ready for tough situations and make smart choices.

VACI: Vital Absorbing Creative Interest

Overcoming addictive behaviors is a journey that involves more than just abstaining from substances or detrimental habits. It's about rediscovering yourself, finding joy, and engaging in activities that provide a deep sense of fulfillment and purpose. This is where SMART Recovery's VACI tool comes into play. VACI, or Vitally Absorbing Creative Interest, isn't just a fancy term; it's a beacon of hope, a way to rediscover passion and joy in life beyond addiction's confines.

USA: Unconditional Self Acceptance (and UOA and ULA)

Recovery isn't just about stopping harmful behaviors; it's also about building a mindset that supports happiness and resilience. That's where Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA), Unconditional Other-Acceptance (UOA), and Unconditional Life-Acceptance (ULA) come in. These three pillars of acceptance in SMART Recovery help you build a strong emotional foundation by teaching you how to fully accept yourself, others, and life's challenges.

Erica Stanford confirms end of reading recovery programme in schools, doesn't rule out job losses

Education Minister Erica Stanford discusses her new literacy plan on AM Credits: Newshub

Education Minister Erica Stanford has not ruled out job losses as the Government moves to end New Zealand's long-running reading recovery programme.  

The programme, which helps struggling readers, is being dumped as part of a $67 million dollar shake-up of the way literacy is taught in state schools.

The Government is making it mandatory for schools to use a structured literacy approach to teach reaching from next year - which is based on phonics, decoding and word understanding.

The reading recovery programme uses a different "whole language" approach, which has been criticised for using pictures to help children guess words.  

On Friday, Stanford confirmed the end of the programme.  

"We will be getting rid of reading recovery, using that same funding and putting that into what we call tier two and three interventions which are small group and one-on-one for the very few kids who fall through the cracks," she told AM. 

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Stanford said feedback she's had from schools is the number of children needing remedial reading significantly drops when they are using structured literacy.  

There are about 270 reading recovery staff in schools and Stanford would not say if some may lose their jobs.  

"All of those people will be teachers, so there will be opportunities for them and we will be investing in retraining people in structured literacy," she said.  

Education unions have criticised the Government's new plan voicing their concerns a one-size-fits-all approach may not be right.  

Labour's education spokesperson Jan Tinetti told AM the devil is in the detail.   

"All approaches of structured literacy are not even and this is where we are getting really hamstrung in this debate.  

"We’re talking about structured literacy as if it is one approach and it isn't. And there are some approaches to structured literacy that are being taught in New Zealand that are... very damaging to young people," she said.  

Tinetti said personal development and teaching teachers needs to be a critical part of the process.  

"If we don't give teachers the knowledge of that, how will they know they're using a structured literacy approach that is damaging? 

"The way I'm hearing it talked about... is, 'This is the magic bullet' - it's not."  

Responding to the criticism, Standford pointed to Tinetti’s previous support for structured literacy when she was Education Minister in the last Labour Government.  

"She was on this show, not that long ago, saying this was the best results she's ever seen and that she could only have dreamt of seeing results like this when she was a principal."  

Under Tinetti's tenure, the Ministry of Education was working on a "common practice model" which would have implemented elements of structured literacy.