Yellowquill School's Reading Recovery Teacher Jennifer Adamson gave a presentation at last night's Portage la Prairie School Board meeting.

Adamson gives a brief outline of the program that focuses on Grade 1 students.

"This program targets the hardest to teach student. The student that is struggling with their process system. We're looking at maybe 3 to 10% of the Grade 1 population, sometimes higher -- it depends on what school and what year -- it varies and fluctuates. Reading Recovery, the whole program is based on every child can learn, we just have to find a way to teach them."

Adamson

She says it's not easy to become a Reading Recovery Teacher, starting with the 300 contact hours to get certified.

"We spend 23 afternoon sessions with out training group of teachers. Watching live lessons, going through the core text, looking at articles -- peer reviewed articles -- discussing strategic activity, discussing processing systems. Then the amount of paperwork, it's every weekend you're committed to reading recovery."

She adds it's not a prescriptive program, as every student learns differently. RRT's are always learning new ways to teach students, by reading peer reviewed journals and working with students.

Adamson says every student learns differently, and it's important to learn new ways to teach them.

"It's not a prescriptive program, and that was the quote that I had said from Barbara Watson. It's about the craft, the teaching craft, and not about prescriptive programming. Every child is an individual, and we have to know what they know in order to teach them."

Adamson says becoming an RRT isn't easy, as you're always trying to improve your teaching ability.