Reading Recovery is a highly effective short-term intervention of one-to-one teaching for first graders.  In Reading Recovery students receive 30-minute lessons each school day for 20 weeks from a specially trained teacher.  As soon as students can read and write at grade level and demonstrate that they can continue to achieve, their lessons are discontinued, and new students receive individual instruction. 

Reading Recovery lessons promote accelerated learning so that students can catch up to their peers, close the achievement gap as quickly as possible, and continue to learn independently.  Acceleration is possible because Reading Recovery teachers base their instruction on carefully docmumented daily observation of what each child already knows about reading and writing.  This approach creates efficiency.  All future instruction works from the child's strengths.  In Reading Recovery, the teacher does not waste time teaching what the child already knows.