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Reading Skills and Strategies
Reading Skills and Strategies
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My Literacy Journey
Throughout my childhood I was never very good at reading. It was something I always struggled with and I grew to not like reading because of this. As a child my mom and dad would read books to me before I went to bed and I always enjoyed looking at the pictures and listening. Then, as I got older my mom would have me begin to read with her out loud. I did not like this because I was not a good reader and I would get so frustrated. During this time I would struggle greatly with reading the pages fluently, I also would mix up some of the letters at times. I also struggled with comprehension, as I got older. My mom would make me read the Junie B. Jones books by myself and then I would have to tell her what happened. Most
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During that time we would work on tricks I could used to stay focused on one like at a time. It would be a strip of transparent paper that would highlight one line of a book at a time. This tool would help me not jump ahead in my reading. As time went on I improved and we would move on to using a tool that would highlight a paragraph at a time. After a year or two of this extra help, I did not have to go as often. Although this helped, it made me feel like I was not as smart as the other students. I felt like everyone was looking at me when I would leave to go with the other …show more content…
I would only read books that were required for class, and even then I usually would not finish them. Reading was never something that I liked. When I got into high school, I started reading books for fun a little more than before. I was always a Harry Potter fan but since I did not like to read I only watched the movies. I remember reading those books and actually liking them. My junior year was also a time in my reading history that I remember well. As a class we were reading the Great Gatsby in time to see the movie for the midnight premier. Each day we were instructed to read up to a certain page, no further. I did not like the book at first, just like any other book I was forced to read for school. But, one night I was reading and the book got so interesting for me I could not put it down. That was the first book in along time that I enjoyed reading that was assigned to me. After my junior year, I went right back to my old ways of not reading books. My senior year I took AP English, so this required a lot of books. Thinking back to that year of school I remember finishing maybe one or two of those books. Although, I didn’t read all of those books, I still got a good grade in the class. One thing I did learn from that class about not reading all the books was reading the summaries is not good enough because, they leave out all the
Struggling with reading came early on in Mikayla’s academic years. Her family was definitely an early influence in her reading ability. Her parents and grandparents were very involved in Mikayla’s reading development. Her father on his off nights would read bedtime stories to her and her sister until about third grade. After third grade, she was expected to read at least thirty minutes before bed every night. She also joined in on Grandpa’s morning rituals of reading the paper, she would read the funnies. According to Jongsu Wee, we learn our reading habits because it is embedded in our everyday life (Jongsu, 2009). Pamela, Mikayla’s mother, said that often Mikayla was very talkative about the books her parents would read to her. She was so excited about reading the next one that often times her mother would stop in the middle of reading to leave her in suspense. Her grandfather, Carl, was also a great influence in her reading. When she would stay at her grandparents’ house, Carl would often read her the funnies or a story in...
Instead of mom reading children’s books to me, I read them to her. And if I stumbled upon something I didn’t know or understand, mom helped me out! Soon enough I started reading to her without stuttering of not knowing how to say a word. I started being able to sound out words easier and my fluency became much better than before. First grade came around and I started reading bigger books such as Junie B. Jones and also the Magic Treehouse books. Books became easier to read as I aged and the books I read were getting bigger and bigger. In 5th and 6th grade I read The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpents Shadow, a trilogy called The Kane Chronicles written by Rick Riordan. I thought these three books were the greatest three books ever written! I even thought they were better than the hunger games! Especially with the series being based around Egyptian gods and theology, and also managed to tie in kids around my age that I could relate to. Those books made me love reading more than I ever have and I would read them again if I had the time to. Once 8th grade came out along I decided to read a “big boy” book: DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I thought I was so cool because I was reading a book that my parents have read. It has been the best book I have yet to read so far because it sparked my interest from the first sentence, to the last, there was intense suspense throughout the whole book and I could nonstop
My literacy journey began long before I had actually learned how to read or write. While recently going through baby pictures with my mother, we came across a photo of my father and I book shopping on the Logos boat, a boat that would come to my island every year that was filled with books for our purchasing. Upon looking at this picture, my mother was quite nostalgic and explained how they began my journey to literacy through experiences like this. My earliest memory of experiencing literature was as a small child. My parents would read bedtime stories to me each night before I went to bed. I vividly remember us sitting on the bed together with this big book of “365 bedtime stories for 365 days” and we read one story each day until we had
My first experience to literacy came as a young adult. I have always been reluctant with my education, because of the family problems I experienced growing up. The harsh treatment our family received growing up made it very difficult to study in school, my body was physically in class but my mind was not. The trials and tribulations I went through growing up as a kid continued throughout my teenage years. Dropping out of high school I believe brought upon literacy difficulty. At the age of twenty-three, I finally had enough of feeling undereducated. Living in my mother’s basement with no job and an 8th grade education, the walls started to close in on me as my frustration became greater by the minute.
Writing is a form of communication that has changed over the years, whether that is the way it is used or the meaning it has for some people. In the generation that I grew up in, writing has been around in many different ways, such as texting or instant messaging friends. I remember using Facebook at an early age and communicating with my friends and family through a different form of writing. Compared to my elders, the way they were taught and the way they used their writing has changed immensely. Since I grew up in a newer generation than them, my writing experience has been partially different in a good way. My literacy narrative will reflect that difference.
My achievement of becoming literate in both English and Spanish, after overcoming a myriad of obstacles distinguishes my literacy history. Writing was one of the things I didn’t like to do as a child. I always thought writing was a waste of time and that I wasn’t going to need it in life. Even though I didn’t invest much time writing, I was one of the best writers in all my classes, probably because I was very dedicated in the other subjects and I loved reading adventure books. I learned how to read and write by the age of four, since in my native country “the Dominican Republic”, kids are enrolled in school at the age of three; usually parents start their child’s education at home before that age.
What is literacy? Literacy is the ability to read and write. It is about a person’s ability to use these skills to shape their life. Being literate means to be able to write and read to talk effectively. Today being literate is to be able to write and read to be successful in the world. Literacy is vital to the advancement for people in their life. It also plays a huge part in the success in one's career endeavors. Years ago literacy just referred to the ability to write, read, and use the information.
It was finally time to head to gym class in the afternoon where we were instructed to take part of a physical test. This test would determine how fit or unfit we are based on a system that was implemented by those with greater authority, on which concluded that it was on such a scale society should be based on. So it was that afternoon that I preformed the tasks that were instructed on to me and my peers. I was able to completed them to my utmost potential which can be consider to be something not so distinctive. It was on this day that I was mocked by one my peers of my lack of ability to preform the instructed physical tasks, that was a no brainer to such a fit individual like himself. It
Many summer reading books are just uninteresting; so for me reading then became a chore that I was being forced to do. I already had a negative experience with being embarrassed while reading, so then to get one boring book after the other just solidified that reading was not enjoyable. Other than bad summer reading books I was just a very active child, I enjoyed running around and playing sports. I did not have the patience as a child to read, I always wanted to be on the go.
Life is like a tree, it grows and develops branches and leaves that come and go as we progress. The environments we live in determine which branches wither and fade and which prosper. Every branch holds some form of learned literacy from the end of the roots to the trunk and highest branch. Literacy encompasses many aspects of life.
The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some childhood trauma associated with it.
My literacy journey commenced at a young age. My story begins with the typical bed time stories and slowly progresses into complex novels. Some points in my literacy journey have made me admire the written word but other times literacy frustrated me. These ups and downs within my story have made me the person I am today. My parents noticed that my reading was not up to par with other children in kindergarten and I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia at the age of five. My parents provided me a reading mentor named Mrs. Mandeville who has shaped my literacy journey in many ways. Events in my childhood have shaped my literacy in various ways.
My literacy skills began to develop much like Deborah Brandt suggests in her article of “Sponsors of literacy” My first memories of learning to write are still quite vivid. I remember holding a big fat crayon in my hand as my mother showed me how to write my name. She would draw a large line on the page and I would copy her movements. We started with capital letters and moved on to lower case letters. My memories of learning to read are similar. I remember my mother reading me picture books with large print that somehow turned in to reading sentences. Most of my early memories of learning to read and write include sitting with my mother, older sister and brothers. I had never really thought about the influence your family has on your reading
All I could remember on my journey to literacy was my concern over my brother and sister’s ability to read and write including solving math problems. That did not really motivate not to become literate; I was extremely playful as a child. What I am able to remember is my first day of school, I cried like a baby when my mom dropped me off. I soon began to grow out of my baby stage and school became really interesting. Even though it was not as hard as it is now, the value that pushed me to be literate was how my teacher was able to discipline students if they didn’t give the best to their education.
Reading and books became a real struggle for me from elementary all the way to high school because I found it hard to comprehend the books that I was made to read. These books were not interesting to me and I found myself starring at pages for hours at a time and would not know or understand what I read.