How I Learned To Become Literate Essay

As a teenager, I now look back and realize how vital it is for children to learn to read and write at such young ages. I am so thankful for parents that read books with me before I even started school, and I am also thankful for the teachers who taught me vowel sounds, prefixes, suffixes, and much more. Teachers also taught me that reading could be fun, which encouraged students to want to read in their free time. Reading and writing are unique activities to me because these activities can be used academically or for personal entertainment. Reading has had a huge impact on my life in the past, present, and hopefully in the future.

One of the most eye opening experiences of my life occurred in the second grade. I would have never thought that doing one simple assignment in elementary school could change my whole perspective on literacy. My understanding of literacy was sparked when I had read my first real book. I remember sitting down on the vividly colorful carpet day dreaming about playing Mario Cart on my Nintendo 64 while everyone was obediently listening to the teacher read a book out loud. It wasn’t that I did not know how to read or listen, I just didn’t care. Reading to me used to be tedious because I did not understand the purpose of it. I did not grow up with the luxury of my parents reading to me because they weren’t literate in English, so I had to figure out for myself why literacy is vital in everyday life. My ongoing learning experience with literacy can be traced back to one simple visit to library.

I have acquired many literacy opportunities throughout my literacy life my parents, grandparents, and teachers ,I hold them very close to my heart because if it wasn’t for them pushing and encouraging me to read and write I wouldn’t be the literate person I am today. I bear a huge family so there are always many voices going through my head so it wasn’t long until I started speaking, as well as comprehending what all these strange words meant recognizing the words was very difficult before I started practicing them. My parents always encouraged me to read and write in a way no child can resist with toys and candy who could say no to that. Every chance they got to help me read they would read with me. I wasn’t forced to read on my own because I didn’t know how.

Ron Padgett, the author of Creative Reading, recalls how he learned to read and write as though these things happened yesterday. Like Padgett, I tried recalling my reading and writing history.

I have always been a reader. Even before I really knew how to read, I ‘read’ the pictures.

My literacy journey had begun earlier than most kids, according to my mother. I started reading in kindergarten, with help with the BOB books and the PBS show Between the Lions. I don’t know when I had started writing exactly, but I remember clearly writing short stories about my cat Stormy in 3rd grade. At that time we had to write weekly short stories, and I only ever wrote about my cat. In 4th grade, I had started exploring writing more; I would write plays for me and my friends to practice during recess. Most of them, I’m happy to say, were actually educational, so my teacher had even let my friends and I perform one about early-American settlers in front of our whole class.

My literacy narrative first unfolded in the playroom of my childhood home when I was an inquisitive two-year-old. My parents would sit down with me on the carpet and patiently teach me sight words. Every time I would

Last week we wrote a blog and one of the questions was “How did you learn to read and write?”  I found this question interesting because I never had really thought about the moment when I actually learned how to read and write. My mom was the first person to expose me to reading and writing. A popular tactic she did to make sure I was staying engaged was to read aloud stories and make me follow along with her. My mom would read me many different stories like Tarzan, Bambi, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Lion King, The Jungle Book, and Hercules. whatever I wanted to listen and follow along with, she would read with me. This really helped with my want to read. The books contained a lot of adventure, which made it easy as a kid to follow along with. I became to gain an imagination and then all of a sudden reading was easier.

Secondly, One of the people most interested in my literacy performance other than my mom was my fifth grade teacher Mr. Greg Monroe. Most students didn’t appreciate his teaching style but I did. Up until this point in my literacy development, I had excelled easily. It wasn’t until I met my teacher that year that I realized everything wasn’t going to be so easy. For the first time I had to actually study rather than to just know the information like normal. Mr. Monroe taught me that I needed to push myself to be better than good, even if it feels like I can’t. Teaching students to go beyond the norm was Monroe’s approach, and I feel as if his approach was extremely helpful as well as encouraging. He taught students to set goals and to develop aspirations. The fifth grade is the last stepping stone to becoming a middle school student which warrants new responsibilities for the students. Mr Monroe made sure that students graduated from his class not only with

My English teacher, Miss Tingley, made us all write about a movie character that we felt connected to. Naturally, I wrote my paper about Matilda. I wrote about how we both loved books and how loving them made us feel different than the rest of our families. After Miss Tingley read my paper we became really close. She gave me tons of books that she thought I would be interested in. I would stay after school in her classroom and talk to her for hours about all of them while she graded papers. I told her her about my past experiences with reading and how I wished that my passion for reading could be useful. She then began to encourage me to become a Rebecca Caudill

When I was a kid, my father read some story books, magazines, and some interesting and funny stories in the newspaper for me. He always told me that reading and learning helpful and useful books will add more to your knowledge. Before school, I was interested in reading story books containing colorful pictures, but I wasn’t able to read and write, so I was just looking at the photos in the books, magazines and newspapers

When I was young I would drown my floor with Dr. Seuss and books that gave excitement to me just by holding them. I loved looking at the pictures, the endless rhymes, and magical color schemes because I had no other outlet than books to reach in a grab my attention the way they could. That’s why picture books are almost a necessity to a child’s development. The type of

I picked up one of the books and fell in love with all the things that it could teach me. My mother who was a special education teacher at the time had always pushed me and my siblings to read. She brought home tons of books for us to read. When I told her I found a great book on horses she was so proud, and from that moment on I have always had a love of reading. My love for reading has grown so much that I now read everything in sight, but reading wasn’t enough for me as it turned out. From all the great books I read I started to come up with ideas about new exciting books people could write, that I could write. So during my eight grade year my burning desire to write a book compelled me to finally do so. I used three notebooks and a ton of lead and wrote my story. When I was finished, I typed it up on my computer and printed it out to show everyone I knew. When people saw that I wrote a book they were proud of me and this pride made me want to continue, but sadly school activities took up all my time and I was unable to finish my second book. My story of how I learned how to love to read and write isn’t quite like Sherman Alexie’s superman moment but it is

Through the years of elementary school, I excelled in reading because of the comprehension I had and my love for books. We were always required to read a book, because we needed a certain amount of accelerated reading points each month. My favorite books were Junie B. Jones and Captain Underpants. I enjoyed reading during these years because it came natural to me and I admired the fictional aspects of books and the way they could make my mind run wild. The teachers I had I credit some of my success to because they helped me succeed in reading during elementary school.

As a child, my interests were more focused on reading than writing. In elementary school I fell in love with books. Initially I read simple children’s books, much like everybody else in my class, but it did not take long for my passion to drive me to read more difficult writings. Fiction books quickly became a replacement for any childhood toys. Instead of blocks or stuffed animals I would ask my parents for books. Since they were aimed at young readers, they tended to be short. I found myself going through them within days, and then soon several hours. Towards the end of elementary school I was reading series like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was captivated, and reading truly opened up a whole new world for me.