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Literacy Before Birth
My literacy story starts way back when I was first born, in my opinion. My parents had heard from friends that reading to the baby in the womb would help to improve the child's future abilities and interest in reading, so naturally, that's what my parents did to me. I don't know if it necessarily worked, but based on my English/Language grades throughout my schooling, I'd say it was a good choice. -
Literacy as a Little Girl
When I was a little girl, every night before bed, my parents would read me two books: one of their choosing, and one of mine. I loved looking at the pictures and asking my parents to define/explain all of the words that I didn't understand. -
Literacy in the Second Grade
By the time I got to the second grade, I loved to read. In my grade 2 class, we were all assigned books to read based on our ability levels. I was in the highest level and proud of myself for flying through all of the books from A-Z (reading level was based on letters of alphabet). -
Literacy in Grade 3
In Grade 3, everyone started becoming so obsessed with the Harry Potter books, so naturally, I wanted in. I made my parents buy me the whole set, and I read books 1 through 4 with occasional help from my parents. Clearly, my mom and dad's involvement in my literacy development was crucial to my success in school. -
Literacy with Cursive Writing
Also, in Grade 3, we learned cursive writing. I was so good at it, but I absolutely hated it. I was so slow, and I couldn't understand the "m's" and the "n's". It was a mess. It definitely shook my confidence in my language skills. To this day, I have never used cursive again, but I suppose, overall, it helped me in my Language classes because I figured out that not every aspect of literacy comes as easily to everyone as reading had come to me. -
Literacy with Flash Cards
Another example of a literacy event in my life that I can think of is flash cards. My mom was obsessed with flash cards. Math problems, identifying punctuation, English words, French words, you name it- I did it. Surprisingly, looking back, I think this helped me more than I originally thought. -
Literacy Through Speeches
Starting in Grades 5 and 6, we began writing and presenting speeches at school. I hated public speaking, but loved the actual process of speech writing. I loved editing my speech, and listening to the opinions of my teacher, peers, and friends. I would say this is where I began to love writing. This influenced my teaching practice because during my practicum I would have my students write about a topic of their interest, revise their writing, and present it to the class as practice. -
Literacy in Elementary School: Summary
In elementary school, language was where I excelled. Not physical education, or math, or art, but always language. I loved finding my place in the classroom, and getting noticed by teachers for my poems, stories, and speeches. I connect my love of literacy in elementary school to what we learned about in week 4. If students have the choice of what to write or read, the response to literacy will be positive and they will be engaged in every aspect of literacy. -
Struggling Through Shakespeare
High school was a bit different. I still loved to read. I still loved to write. But Shakespeare just plain stressed me out. The plays didn't make sense to me. They weren't writeen in the logical way that I was used to seeing, with words that I was familiar with. I struggled a lot. I needed my English teacher for extra help, and had a lot of help from "No Fear Shakespeare" online. It was a minor bump in the creation of my "literacy story". -
Essays
Aside from Shakespeare, high school English definitely accelerated my literacy skills. Essay writing became natural to me. I loved to write essays and still do. I'm that girl in university who prefers to write paper rather than a test. I took English classes in first and second year, but stopped once they became overwhelming with course readings and older sonnets/poems that I didn't understand. -
My Teaching Practice
Today, I think that literacy plays a huge role in my education. I realize the significance of literacy in my teaching practice. I taught an entire non-fiction writing unit in Language during my first block, and understand the importance of stressing the life skills of reading, writing, and speaking. I learned in this course that there are a variety of approaches to teaching literacy. Literacy circles, read-a-louds, observations, conferecing, and shared reading are all practices I used. -
Implementing What I've Learned
When I have my own kids, I will definitely follow in my parents' footsteps with the "reading to the baby in the belly" strategy, flash card strategy, and always being involved in my child's progress in school. -
Summary
From readings in class, to creating lesson plans, to writing a paper, my parents, teachers, and interest in reading have all guided me to being a literate student and teacher. Overall, my personal literacy story has been a long one, but it is still one that has not yet been fully written. -
Credits
