How are students selected for the Reading Recovery program?

The students selected to participate in the Reading Recovery program are those who, after a year at school, appear to be at greatest risk of literacy failure.
Before students enter the Reading Recovery program an Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (M. Clay 2002) is administered individually in order to identify the lowest 20% of readers. The lowest achievers of those students enter the program.
The Observation Survey contains six tasks.
1. Taking a Record of Reading Continuous Text The student reads texts of increasing difficulty until the teacher can identify which texts are easy for the student to read, which texts are at the student's instructional level and which texts are currently too hard for the student.
2. Letter Identification The student is required to identify alphabet symbols.
3. Concepts About Print An assessment is made of the student’s knowledge of the way language is printed. The teacher is able to gather important data on a student’s early reading behaviours that affect reading acquisition.
4. Word Reading: Clay Word Test Students read a list of fifteen words that are amongst the most frequently found in early texts.
5. Writing Vocabulary In a 10-minute period, students are asked to write all the words that they know.
6. Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words The teacher reads a prescribed two-sentence text and the student's written response is scored by counting his or her representation of the sounds they can hear with letters.
In addition to the Observational Survey, teachers administer the Burt Word Test which provides a further measure of a child's word recognition.
When these tasks are complete, the teacher writes a summary of the literacy competencies of each student selected. This provides guidance for planning the beginning of each student's program.