This article describes the reading development of two Hispanic children during their first-grade year of school. Their literacy emergence is portrayed in relation to the teacher's (and to some extent the children's families') expectations and the classroom balanced reading program. This qualitative study, written here in the “I-witnessing” or “confessional” narrative genre, was conducted in the first author's classroom while on reassignment in her 17th year as a university professor of Literacy Studies. The children's reading development is interpreted in light of current controversies in second-language learning, including whether English orality must precede literacy.
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