While teaching kindergarten, I was required to study in a program called Reading Recovery with our school site’s designated reading coach.  I was skeptical at first, and honestly did not want to participate in the program.  I am thankful that I did.  Our reading coach did an amazing job and her enthusiasm for teaching reading transferred to me.  While studying at UCLA, I had the opportunity to volunteer to teach reading to inner city students at a local middle school.  I was 19 and enjoyed my brief interactions in the classroom.  This would be the beginning of my journey into reading education.  These are the primary skills that I learned from the program:

1.  Teach the children to use their pointing finger to identify each word while reading.
2.  Have the students move their fingers from left to right.
3.  Identify capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and discuss punctuation at the end of the sentence.
4. Instruct the students to count the number of words in a sentence.
5. Instruct the students to count the number of sentences on a page.
6. Instruct the students to identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words.
7. Teach the students to name parts of the book:  the front cover, back cover, spine, what the author and illustrator do.
8. Our group used books by Joy Cowley.  http://www.joycowley.com/