News release

Nova Scotia Adapts Reading Recovery for French

Education (July 1999 - March 2013)

Nova Scotia has adapted the internationally renowned Reading Recovery program to the French language. The French language version will be used in Acadian schools in the province and French-speaking jurisdictions around the world.

Reading Recovery is a highly effective program which identifies and helps Grade 1 students with reading and writing difficulties. Through the program, students have intensive, daily 30-minute lessons with trained Reading Recovery teachers to bring them up to, or beyond, the average reading level of their classmates.

"We've had great success with the Reading Recovery program in English in Nova Scotia," said Education Minister Jane Purves. "We've also developed the expertise to take it one step further so it can help francophone students here and in other French- speaking areas like Quebec or France."

Marie Clay, a New Zealand psychologist and literacy specialist, created Reading Recovery in English in the late 1970s. The Halifax Regional School Board was among the first in Canada to implement the program in 1988.

Staff in the Department of Education began working on a French adaptation in 1998 and consulted Dr. Clay during the process. The French Reading Recovery program has just been published and is being presented at the national conference of the Association canadienne d'éducation de langue francaise in Halifax on Aug. 17.

"It's much more than a simple translation because learning challenges are different in every language," said Ms. Purves. "Our staff had to adapt the entire program to the French language."

French is the third language for which Reading Recovery has been adapted. Dr. Clay adapted the program to the Mäori language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Reading Recovery has also been adapted for the Spanish language.

Nova Scotia has 198 trained Reading Recovery teachers for English first-language instruction and training is ongoing for more. The Conseil scolaire acadien provincial has begun training teachers for French first-language instruction and pilot projects are in place to implement Reading Recovery in the French language across the province.

Negotiations for royalties on the French program will soon be complete. The department's share of revenues from the sale of the program will be reinvested in the provincial Reading Recovery program.