This week during my student teaching, I conducted a guided reading lesson with Master Teacher's class. She assigned me her low group (meaning their considered struggling readers). Because this was my first lesson with Kindergarten, I didn't really know what I was getting into. In the past, I have had experience with kindergartners reading well. So, when I was reading this paperback book, which is part of the basal reading program the school was using, the students were really having a difficult time blending the sounds together. They knew each phonemic sound of every letter, but they were struggling in putting them together. More than that, because the reading was a bit choppy, the comprehension was not through the words they read but through the pictures that were on the page. Here's to say, it was a stretch for me to tackle this lesson. However, it is a wake up call for me because this is the reality of the children in our schools today, especially in low-performing schools. So, in my head I'm trying to go through the different strategies that we learned in our Reading Class (tactile manipulatives, rimes/onsets, associations of sound, more guided reading, some shared or interactive reading). It's kinda frustrating because I feel I should know what to do by now, but the thing is, honestly, I don't (I try, but I'm in that stage of trial and error in applying all the theories) So, in this process of application, I just hold on to God's word:

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.