After my oldest daughter finished kindergarten, I realized that what everyone had been telling me was true... The most important skill for children to work on in kindergarten is reading. Before Autumn learned to read, reading was the subject I was most anxious about. My student teaching was in first, third, and fifth grades. I did fine in third and fifth grades, but my first grade supervising teacher gave me only a satisfactory rating and suggested that I really needed to work on my patience. She was right. I did. But, the other lesson I learned during my time with the first graders was what an amazing process it is when a child learns to read. Our brains must first connect symbols to sounds. Then, we connect letter sounds together to make words. Then, those words are connected together to express thoughts. It truly is an amazing feat. My awe of this process made me very apprehensive about teaching Autumn to read. ...