A Picture of My Class

Just to give you a little background on my unique teaching situation: 
I teach first graders in a Christian school located in rural Kentucky.  The school is very new and only has 90 students from preschool to grade 5.  In my class, there are 10 students, 6 boys and 4 girls.  All of the students but one were in the same kindergarten class at this Christian school.  The other student was homeschooled prior to first grade.  Although the school teaches Christian concepts and relates to the Bible across content areas, not all of the students are actively attending church.  Academically speaking, 5 out of the 10 students are above first grade reading level while 3 are at grade level and 2 are slightly below grade level.  The school has adopted a very strict, traditional curriculum which contains a very systematic phonics-based approach to reading instruction.  My classroom setting is a bit different than public schools in a sense that we are only in session three days a week.  We have a combined private and home-school setting.  Teachers guide the instruction, but we rely heavily on the parents to compliment our in-class instruction.  We have strong parental support, but the parents' level of comfort with instruction is minimal in comparison with an educator.  This leads to worksheet practice in the homes of my students during the home-school portion of the school week.  This is not the way I want to teach my students to read.  Nor is it effective, so I am conducting research on various hands-on phonics strategies to see if these will have a positive impact on the reading fluency of my students.