Fourth Grade English Class Analysis

I shrank in my seat and looked away, trying to hide from the teacher so that she would not call on me. I was in my fourth grade english class and we had to read aloud to the class at least once a week. Occasionally, I would get through a passage without hearing the snickering or laughter of my classmates but most times the teacher had to tell them to stop. Towards the end of the year it got so bad that my teacher would just allow me to not read that week. You can do this, is what I would always tell myself before I started to read. After the first few sentences I would realize I can’t do this and in the background I would hear, “Hah he still can’t read”,“I know, that is so embarrassing”, “How is he even in fourth grade?”, and laughter.

I would always avoid reading anything to them or near them for the fear they would find out I was a terrible reader. It was easy to cover my bad reading, until fourth grade when we had to read aloud to the class. My parents had no reason to`question my skills in anything academic since I had straight A’s in all my classes. Looking back at this time in my life, I truly have no idea how I did so well in school but could not read. It wasn’t until my fourth grade teacher had a parent teacher conference with my mom, that my parents found out my reading level was actually two levels behind. That summer break my parents tried to get me to read books. However, instead of reading the books I would look up online what happened in each chapter and tell them that. My parents were pleased with how I was able to read and comprehend books on my grade level, but it did not last. The first week of school my fifth grade teacher had my class do a reading check to verify our reading levels. My teacher immediately told my parents that my reading skills were well below where they should be. My father was furious with me that I had lied about reading the books, so he decided to have me read books with him alternating who read