Reflections about my second year of teaching reading

On the second day of school, I realized that four students had entered my first grade classroom – reading. As that school day concluded, at the beginning of my second year of teaching, I remember sitting down at my desk, and thinking to myself, Now what? These were not the students I was expecting. In this paper I explain how I adapted my reading beliefs and teaching practices to meet the challenge the four students posed to me. I describe each student, and their reading behaviors. Next, I discuss perspectives about early literacy, in order to examine my beliefs in more detail. Then, I explore alternative teaching practices for reading instruction. I conclude by explaining how the students and my reading about the perspectives and alternative teaching practices affected me as a teacher