The tough part: Getting first graders engaged in reading

Mahiri, Jabari, & Maniates, Helen. (2013/2014). The tough part: Getting first graders engaged in reading. The Reading Teacher, 67(4), 256-263.


Here we get a glimpse of how one first grade teacher in a diverse urban classroom worked within and around the constraints of a mandated reading program and still managed to meet the needs of her students. Clearly, she believed strongly that all of her students could become engaged, capable readers, even though many of them came to her not ready for the demands that a full first grade day presents to today’s children. The curriculum presented a demanding list of decoding skills that had to be mastered by the middle of the first grade year, but some of the children described in the case study here did not have a conception of how to “do school” or the stamina to focus on learning for any length of time. The teacher in the case study had to help her students quickly learn those important skills.

Mahiri and Maniates describe the case study teacher’s strategic actions in three categories: 1) strategic selection of content, 2) strategic pacing of lessons, and 3) strategic grouping of students. The teacher often substituted and supplemented texts when those in the reading program were difficult for her students to relate to, and read texts aloud to students to provide them with “something else to grab on to” (p. 261). In terms of pacing, she often sped up the pace of skills lessons so that students would not lose attention and focus, but also at times slowed down the pace of skills attainment so she could be sure that pace was developmentally appropriate for all students rather than approaching skills in a lockstep fashion that demanded identical benchmarks for all children. For example, the district had set certain benchmarks for words per minute as an indicator of fluency, but this teacher realized that some children, while technically meeting those benchmarks, were not really understanding what they read. She had the courage to demand that reading be a meaning-making activity, and to slow her students down if they were not understanding the words they read. When it came to grouping, this teacher decided to make time for small group differentiated instruction, even though the program she was working within called only for whole group instruction. Sometimes she worked on the same skills with all groups, but in each group was able to approach those skills in differentiated ways. In short, she was committed to doing whatever it took to make sure each student could become an engaged reader, and though she implemented her district’s program as much as she could, the children’s needs clearly came first. I felt admiration as I read this account, and I wanted to know more about this teacher and others like her.

I wonder—what factors shaped the development of a teacher like the one Mahiri and Maniates describe here? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions did she need to possess to do what she did in this first grade classroom? What was this teacher like as a teacher candidate, and what kind of teacher education program did she complete? What sorts of professional development has she experienced? From what did her dedication to making sure all children learn arise? What led her to seek, gain, and maintain employment in a school setting that many teachers would shy away from and see as too challenging? If we can learn more about teachers like this, maybe we can figure out ways to find and nurture more teachers who will do what it takes to help all children become readers.