UALR will host the 20th anniversary Arkansas Reading Recovery and Comprehensive Literacy K-8 Conference and Administrators Institute Wednesday to Friday, March 16-18, at Little Rock’s Peabody Hotel Conference Center.

The conference theme, “Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy: Working Together for Literacy,” focuses on the need for layered partnerships among groups to promote reading proficiency by the end of third grade.

“During our reception on March 17, we will be recognizing the 20 year journey of Reading Recovery in Arkansas and the individuals who helped to bring the program to the state,  including the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation,” said Dr. Linda Dorn, director of UALR’s Center for Literacy.

Last fall, UALR received a $2.7 million grant through the U.S. Department of Education to expand its Reading Recovery teacher training and literacy intervention education program. The grant is part of a $45.5 million effort by the Department of Education to “fund what works” in education over the next five years. The “Reading Recovery: Scaling Up What Works” project is a collaboration of 15 institutions of higher education with Ohio State University as the lead institution. UALR is the only Arkansas institution to receive the funding.

UALR College of Education Dean Angela Sewall and Dr. Linda Dorn, director of the UALR Center for Literacy in the College of Education, said the Arkansas funding will allow the university to expand the successful program to struggling schools in Arkansas.

“The goal of Reading Recovery is to reduce the number of first graders who are struggling in reading and to reduce the cost of these learners to the educational system,” Dorn said. “We are excited to have the opportunity to expand the program to more Arkansas schools.”

Nationally recognized speakers scheduled to present at the conference include Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, Peter Johnston of State University of New York in Albany, Maria Nichols of the San Diego City Schools, Nell Duke of Michigan State University, Ralph Smith, executive vice president of the Annie E. Kasey Foundation, and Sherece West, president and chief executive officer of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

Times and places of speaker presentations can be found program schedule grid.

Reading Recovery® is a short-term early literacy intervention that provides intensive individual instruction for the children with the lowest reading performance in first grade. Students receive 30 minutes of daily individual instruction in reading and writing for a period of 12 to 20 weeks from a highly trained, certified Reading Recovery teacher who teaches Reading Recovery for approximately half of the school day.

Developed in New Zealand by Dr. Marie Clay in the mid-1970’s, following extensive observational research on children who were learning to read, Reading Recovery is currently available in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. In 1991, UALR became a Reading Recovery Training Center for Teacher Leaders.

For more information about the conference about UALR’s role in Reading Recovery programs, contact Dr. Janet Behrend, conference chair, UALR’s Center for Literacy, at 501-569-3097.