How I Learned To Read

The first time I remember reading was when I was in the first grade. I can remember my first book was ¨Miss Bindergarten gets ready for kindergarten¨. I was really excited to read for the first time. I can remember that at first it was hard for me to real, but once I got the hang of it, reading became easy for me. The way that I learned to read is the teacher would tell me how to see the words and identify them when I came across them. My teacher was very helpful with teaching me how to read and so was my brother Treavon. The way that my brother Treavon was a big and helpful influence in the literacy part of my life is he would read to me and then I would try to read back to him. Eventually all of the help that I had gotten with my reading

Colorado was a complete three sixty from what life was like in Chicago. The school that I went to was called Mark Twain Elementary School. It was very different from Lake Louise, the school that I had just came from. That was when my reading really got better. In no time I was at the top of my reading class, just like before. Well actually I was more like in the middle of the, how do you say, the ¨reading chart¨. Once I hit the third grade I Started slacking just a little bit in my reading. Don’t get me wrong I was still a good reader, I just kind of slowed down. My teacher Ms.Allgren used to encourage me to read every night before I went to bed. I didn’t want to, but my mother made sure I did. Every night she would say “ Chris you better have read a book, like that teacher said to”. I would read books like Dr. Seuss, the magic treehouse, cultural books, and many other books that I would get from the school library. Eventually by the time I got to the fourth grade I was back at it again as a top reader in my class. By the fifth grade, I started not to read as much as I used to and dropped a little reading wise. My fifth grade teacher didn’t really encourage us to read many books, besides the books that we read in class as a whole. Now that was no excuse for me to stop reading, but I’m not gonna lie it felt great to not have to read as much anymore. Fast forward to the seventh grade, that was really when I

To this day I can still read that book series, even though I did not read as much as I used to. From then on as I got older I start reading and eventually I wasn’t reading at all. That still is a reality to this day. If I’m truthful with myself, I would rather watch TV, rather than read. It’s an awful habit that I have picked up, but that’s just the way it is. But nevertheless, I know that one day I will eventually begin the process of reading again. Now that I have talked about my reading experiences, i’m going to talk about some of my writing experiences. Growing up, a lot happened to me. A lot of bad things, and some good things. But the thing is all of these things molded me into the person that I am today. Writing played a part in that. When I turned six, I wrote a six page book. My grandmother being the great woman that she is wanted to get it published, but I didn’t want to get it published. Then again when I turned eight I wrote three more books. I can’t remember what I wrote them about but what I do remember is how everybody in my family would tell me how great of a writer I was. I knew they didn’t really like the books but it felt good to be praised about what I had done. At one point I actually wanted to become a writer as a career for my future. But that ended up not being a plan of my future. Now a person who did