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History Of Reading Instruction : A Book About A Dog Named Pug

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History of Reading Instruction
My earliest memories of learning to read come from first grade and a book about a dog named Pug. I remember calling the words with concentration and focus, See Pug run. Run Pug, run. I don’t recall things improving much in the second grade “turtle” reading group I was assigned to. I struggled with fluency and confidence, especially in reading group, which consisted of sitting around the kidney bean table while each student read a page in turn. Fortunately, I had a proactive mother who borrowed a copy of the basal reader from the teacher and practiced the weekly story with me at home. Not only that, she read real literature to me, which ignited a passion for reading that was not developed in my primary classrooms.
My early reading experiences reflect the history that Vogt and Shearer (2011) describe in the first chapter of Reading Specialists and Literacy Coaches in the Real World. The basal reading programs of the 1970s and 1980s included “leveled readers, phonics activities, and a great deal of comprehension skill practice, usually found on the pages of the accompanying workbooks. The programs also included highly structured, detailed teacher’s guides, with different lesson plans for each of the three instructional groups” (Vogt & Shearer, 2011, p.13).
During the next two decades, the focus of reading instruction shifted away from phonics based basal reading programs. Instead, research suggested teaching children how to think and

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