Literacy Narative Draft

Reading and Writing Background

Reading and writing is a ‘must know how to do’ in today’s society. With the constant growing technology and growth of industrial and economic status reading and writing are vital to succeed. This is why parents start teaching their kids to read and write at early ages such as 1 or 2 years old. Games are designed so that the kids are entertained but they are still learning the simple techniques of reading and writing. As the kids get older then more advanced techniques are shown to help them learn about more complex ideals of reading and writing. When these little kids leave home and go out on their own, they will have a strong base for reading and writing and will be able to carry themselves through everyday society. This is why English classes in school are so heavily stressed; this is why two out of three sections on the SAT are concerned with reading and writing, this is why English is a required course for all students. Learning to read and write while in school is unavoidable. Without it, one would not be able to graduate without the required English credits.

My personal Story

As a little kid my parents bought me games and other knick knacks to help me learn to read and write. I played games on the leap frog console, which is a handhold Gameboy with nothing but reading and writing games designed for it. My parents would make me take that on trips anywhere, even if it was just down the road. I believe the reason for this is because they wanted me to learn the basics early on and be able to do well in English courses. I also watched interactive TV shows that taught me how to follow plot and how to distinguish characters and their purpose within that certain episode. Reading and writing was everywhere around me, I was just too young to realize it. Once I had worked my way through kindergarten I then when into elementary school where I had one of the best personal experiences of my reading and writing career. My 2^nd grade English teacher, Mrs. Kondax, was more than a teacher to me, she was my best friend. I came to her for everything regarding anything, she always talked to me about anything I wanted and she always helped me with my English work. I remember me and my best friend, Scott Latta, would go to her house to do English homework and sometimes to even have dinner at her house. It may seem a little weird at first but she helped me so much in the earlier stages of understanding the process of reading and writing. She is one of my biggest inspirations to do well in school and I still stay in touch with her to this day. Just last year actually I contacted her to see if she would help me write my senior exit paper. We were able to get some lunch together and she was still able to help me put thoughts on paper. I ended up receiving a 98 on my senior exit paper. After completing my elementary career I then advanced to middle school where I furthered my understanding of reading and writing. During 6^th grade I had to make a scrapbook of my entire 5^th and 6^th grade career at Lake Norman Charter School. Even though this scrapbook was just pictures with captions and some writing incorporated into. It taught me plot my line structure, how to organize my thoughts from beginning to end. In this particular case I was organizing instances and key moments in chronological order from the start of 5^th grade to the end of 6^th grade. Even though it was something so simple, it was effective in the learning process of writing. Around this time in my life I began acting. I started doing plays at the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte here in downtown Charlotte. I quickly began to read and understand plays, and also be able to act them out. I was in many plays and getting real good at acting. I played many major roles in famous plays such as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Dartaginian in The Three Musketeers, Bottom in the Midsummer night’s dream, and many other plays. I was even in the paid production of The Chronicles of Narnia, where I got paid to play a mouse for the play. Acting is a big part of my life and I still do it to this day. It has taught me how to fully understand the depth of characters, and how to read a plot and understand it from beginning to end. Acting has also taught me reading skills, instead of just reading words on a page I submerge myself into the situation that I am reading; I put myself in the story. This has made me a stronger reader and writer. Once I started my senior year in high school I started to take a bit of a break from acting and focus on the big senior exit project. This project was designed to test my knowledge and understanding of the reading and writing process. In the end I ended up getting a 98 on the paper and a 92 on the presentation. My topic was “Does hunting help control animal over-population?” I did all the research and background checks I did before writing my paper. All my knowledge came together and I was able to implement all my knowledge to the best of my ability. In conclusion, I have been around reading and writing my whole life and I can only continue to learn how read and write.

Invention Questions

Reading and writing is a cognitive learning style. One must be able to continue to learn the methods of reading and writing as they continue on in their life. For example as elementary kids we didn’t learn about fragments and subjects within a sentence, we simply learned how to spell, how to write capital letters, and how to use basic grammar such as periods and commas. As we grow we learn more advanced terms and methods. Our reading and writing skills are always growing and learning. The special thing about these skills is that everybody has their own story of how they’ve come to acquire such skills.

I learned to read and write through basic learning games provided by my parents. This learning style was at the earliest possible level of learning my little brain would allow. Once I grew I attended elementary school where I furthered my learning skills in the field of reading and writing. Back in elementary school we had to write our own children’s book and then dress up like the main character in the book and present the book we made in class. This taught us to write a complete thought from beginning to end, granite the book did have lots of pictures but the concept is still the same. I got a sense of understanding how to write a complete thought in order while still making the book entertaining. This skill would help later down the road when I had to write papers that interested the reader from beginning to end. This also improved my skills as a reader by allowing me to read from beginning to end and to understand concepts and images. However; little things would get on my nerve throughout my middle school career when related to writing. The teacher would teach us these concepts and we would implement them in our writing but it always seems whatever we wrote it never seemed to please the teacher. Maybe it was just the teacher or maybe the writing really wasn’t that good. But what I did like about writing in my middle school career is that on the occasion we got to write about whatever we wanted with no grading. It was considered an assignment and all we had to do was put our own thoughts on paper about whatever we wanted. To this day I still use the same basic reading and writing skills that I learned as a younger kid. However I have learned more advanced skills but when it comes down to the grits of it all you are still using the same basic skills you learned as a kid. I love to write about what I want to write about, I hate having restrictions on writing that says we have to write something in a certain amount of words. I believe that this attitude towards writing just developed over the years and I think it wasn’t inspired by anybody it was just something I felt about reading and writing. But my parents have been the most influential people in my reading and writing because they have always been there for me and have always edited all of my papers for me and they are used to my style of writing so they know what to look for in terms of grammar and such. Personally in this current class none of the articles we have read and discussed have really touched my past with how I read and write, but im sure there is one out there.