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Bed time
When I was little my parents would get my brother and I ready for bed by telling us to pick out 2 stories. It was my favorite time because when I was little I loved being read to. Some of my favorite books were Goodnight Moon, The Little Engine That Could, and some Nursery Rhymes. -
Kindergarten
Everyday in my kindergarten class, my teacher would ring a bell and that meant to clean up your area and in our heads we knew the routine the more we practiced it. After our area was clean, we would sit pretzel leg styled in a circle and wait for our teacher to read us a book. This is where I first can recall showing any interest at all towards reading and pinpointed a start in my education. As the year went on, the level of my reading comprehension went up as well and so on in the years after. -
Reading help
In second grade I needed help for reading because I had a lisp and teachers couldn't understand me fully. I had a hard time comprehending what I was reading so every week I would go to a small classroom in the library with maybe 2 other kids with the similar issue and we would all work together on reading and writing. When we would take a test or quiz I would sit in the room so it was quiet and I could concentrate easier. -
Great America Tickets
Every year in Elementary school we would get a sheet that your parents would have to sign, if you read a certain number of books you would get a free Great America ticket. It was like an award to us, and it wasn't very hard to achieve. Our teachers goals were to get us to read as much as possible, and for most kids we needed an award for that. -
Typewriter
I got a typewriter for Christmas one year and I thought that it was the best gift ever. I used to love to read and write. I would spend hours making up stories and playing around on it. I would write thank you letters to my family for the gifts I got and such. The typewriter is different than typing a paper on a computer because there isn't any autocorrect and the writing comes right onto the paper without having to print it afterward. -
Paragraph structure
In Elementary school and middle school we were taught to write papers a specific way and we had to do it that way. We would use colors like green for the topic sentence, yellow as your supporting sentence for your paragraph, and red as your ending sentence. It taught us correct paragraph structure while trying to make it somewhat interesting and fun for us. -
Harry Potter
I read my first Harry Potter book in 6th grade and I loved it, and then the movie followed. I caught an interest very fast to this series. It was a book that I could actually read for hours. My family has always been into the movies and the books so they introduced me to it. After I finished the Harry potter series I picked up The Series of Unfortunate Events and other book series. I was very big into reading during this time and it moved my Lexile score up and I gained more interest in reading. -
First facebook
My mom finally let me get my first Facebook profile. I made a lot of stupid posts that I now look back at and laugh. I have an app called Time hop that shows me everything that I have posted on Facebook. My grammar was very bad and so was my spelling. One of my posts from 7 years ago today was "getting read for the school dance cant wait then after that having a sleepover cant wait." It is pretty embarrassing looking back at but it shows how much my writing has changed etc. -
Church
I went to Missouri and the family I went with is Mormon. I went to a Mormon church and things were much different from going to a typical Catholic church that I was used to back home, the process of the mass was way different than a catholic mass. Also, I've lived in Wisconsin for the majority of my life and a huge factor was also that the people in Missouri are found to be much more different than the people I'm used to in Wisconsin. -
Words with friends
Words with friends came out on Facebook and a lot of my friends were playing it. The game is a lot like scrabble, which I liked playing when I was little. A lot of my friends get competitive on it which just makes the game more fun. I learn a lot of new words while playing because sometimes you just throw letters places and hope that it makes a word. -
Resturant
My family and I went to a Mexican restaurant back in the summer before my Sophomore year and it was kind of difficult to understand the server that we had because his English was sort of broken. He mainly spoke Spanish, and when he spoke English he had an obvious accent, it was different but it wasn't too much of a distraction and he was very helpful and respectful -
Socratic Seminar
My sophomore year of high school in my Econ class we had a Socratic seminar on how tax rate has changed over the years. This seminar gave us a chance to discuss with our classmates without having the teacher lead us to sort of prepare us for college. During my high school duration, Socratic seminars became a thing in several of my classes and it was very open ended; it gave us as students an opportunity to voice our opinion in a better manner and also to motivate the other students likewise. -
Helping a child read
I read the book of the day with my mom's friends kids that were in school. There mom had to much going on and it was hard to get them interested in reading. I would help read with them after school and they liked it because it was someone new and I had time to do it with them. -
Utah
I went to Utah on a family vacation last year, things were different there. Most people there were Mormon and were very tied to there church and community. We viewed some of the Mormon temples and people would come around talking about the Mormon religion which expanded my knowledge on them. There were also a lot of homeless people when I went there, they would be begging for money in the tourist towns. -
Suspended
I had a teacher in one of my science classes that I did not get along with too well. I got a bad grade in the class because I just could not stand being in the class, it wasn't anything personal I just didn't like her teaching style. One day she pissed me off pretty bad so I walked out and called her a bitch and was suspended for a good amount of time. In my opinion, it was a pretty reasonable thing to do only because she had disrespected me and a lot of the things in her class were unjustified. -
Working At The Bar (bar lingo)
When I first began working at the bar, I had to go through a certain training in order to qualify as a bartender. I would describe "bar lingo" as a different language because when the customer's come in, they don't specify exactly what drinks they want but instead give me the nickname of the drink and it's expected of me to know the ingredients/certain types of drinks that go into it. Not to mention, the utensils at the bar that we need in order to make the drinks have names as well. -
English class
Everyday in English last year we would switch off days that we had to read and write for 15 minutes. Our teacher would give us a topic that we could talk about if we chose to do so or we could write about what we wanted to. After she would collect them and ask us if we wanted to share what we talked about. It would allow us to express our thoughts about anything we wanted to. -
First college paper
I wrote my first paper in college. It was for my biology class and I had to write a lab report. This particular lab report was harder compared to something I would have written in high school because the teacher didn't really direct us, she kind of just expected us to know how to do the report, there weren't many guidelines to begin with or a certain formation that we had to follow which was new to me and it required me to put in more time and effort. -
iBooks
On the iPhone there is an app called iBooks, it is reading on your phone pretty much. When I went to Hawaii a few weeks ago I knew the plane ride was going to be very long and boring so I bought a few books that I enjoyed to read on the flights. That is one of the only times I have read for fun but I enjoyed it and actually chilled on the beach some days and read my book. I picked up American Sniper and started to re-read Harry Potter. It's nice getting lost in a good book sometimes. -
Hawaii
I went to Hawaii for over a week and things were a little different there. A lot of the Hawaiians had a slang when they talked. They used different words to greet people and say goodbye, but they also mixed the Hawaiian language with English. Everyone was very nice there and wanted to talk to you which was kind of a change from being in Wisconsin where people usually keep to themselves. The cost of living in Hawaii is more expensive as well, hence why the things there are more pricy.
