A second grade teacher in a rural Appalachian school draws heavily on familiar regional literature and the children's own rich mountain heritage and culture to teach reading to her students, covering the required basal readings in only one day per week. Students use the basals on Mondays and retell the texts on paper. They spend the rest of the week writing stories, reading them, and sharing them with other students. Every week they have a real radio show where they read and tell their own stories, sing songs, and ask their listeners to write them letters. By the end of the year they have written 11 different kinds of stories, as well as articles, letters, plays, books, and puppet shows. All the stories are collected in a storybook which is retained as an example for next year's students. Students keep track of their own progress by referring to a list of essential reading skills inside their individual reading folders. The most important benefit of this approach is that student motivation to read is high, unlike the low motivation which accompanied the purely basal reader approach. Every student in the teacher's class is reading avidly, none is failing, and absenteeism is down. (RS)

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