Becoming Me!

Becoming me!

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When a child is born they all start off at the same stage, and are capable of growing and becoming anything they want to be. However, each child’s journey will be different and that makes each and everyone of us unique. Learning to read and write are the two main steps into helping you learn because without knowing how to read or write you cant do much of anything. Learning to read and write for me was a pretty easy thing to do because of the tools I was given and the people I had to help me on my journey. If I didn’t have those basic tools helping me while I was younger then my reading and writing skills may be very different today.

Learning to read sometimes seemed like a very long and stressful task for not only me but the people trying to teach me as well. I was a pretty fast learner when it came to many things growing up. However, to start learning anything you must learn the basics of how to read. Reading is the foundation of pretty much everything you will learn how to do, so this was the first thing I learned to do. I can remember my mom starting to teach me how to read before I even got to pre-school. Without reading you wouldn’t know how to play a new game you just bought because you can’t read the instructions, or learn how to bake a cake because you can’t read the ingredients. Teaching someone to read can be a hard task because you have nothing to start with because reading is the base to everything you will learn. Learning to read for me was pretty fun however because the tools my mom used allowed me to feel like I was playing a game while I was learning to read.

The biggest tool I can remember that really made and impact on how I learned to read was interactive games. There were so many teaching games on the internet that taught you so much and allowed you still have fun to the point you didn’t even realize that you were learning. I would play the games were you would click on a picture or image and the computer would say what that item was back to you. For example, if I clicked on a picture of a four legged creature with a wagging tail and wet tongue the computer would say dog. Not only would it say dog but the word would pop up on the screen. D-O-G, the word being sounded out letter by letter so I could not only see but hear how each letter was supposed to sound and how they all came together to describe that image. From that point forward that one word allowed me to understand so many more words that I see. Since I now knew what each letter in D-O-G sounded like if I saw another word that started with the letter D I automatically knew that it would make the “Duh” sound. Even though I was learning while playing these games, I didn’t notice because I was having so much fun. All of the different colored pictures and items would grab my little attention and I could go on for hours.

Once I started school I wasn’t on the computer as much and my teachers started using their own techniques to help teach us learn to read. From pre-k through first grade I can remember flashcards becoming my new best friend. Showing us different words with the pictures right beside them was like the interactive games I played at home but it was on paper. Now I was still practicing my reading and getting familiar with the letters and how to pronounce them to create words and as the years went on and I progressed from pre-k to first grade the words became harder. I remember when it was time for our reading lesson in the first grade and my sweet teacher would stand in front of the class and with a very soft voice she would slowly sound out each word with us. We would move our mouth so dramatically to sound out every letter to create the word on the flashcard. Simple tricks like that seemed crazy looking back at it but they made a very big difference and soon after that I was able to take those words and put them together to read sentences.

Writing was the next task I learned but that can take years to master because you must learn how to create the letters on paper, put them in the correct order to make a word or sentence and then develop your own writing style. I started learning to write soon after learning how to read when I got into elementary school. It took years of practice to get to where I am today. Starting off with the basics when I was learning how to write I could very much remember the stencils of letters be given out to me in class and my teacher telling us to pick up are little wooden pencils and trace the dotted grey lines on the paper. Each day we would focus on a new letter in the alphabet, practicing the whole day how to make the big A and the small a, when to use them in a sentence, and how your pencil should move around the paper to form each and every letter.

After going through the alphabet the next step was learning how to form words. The dotted lines on the paper would have multiple letter from the alphabet that I would take my pencil and trace over to form a word and then BOOM, I was writing! Tracing the letter on the papers would seem to get boring and repetitive after a while but the more I did it the easier it became and before I knew it, I didn’t even need the dotted lines anymore. I was writing on my own. Tracing helps by not only showing you visually what the letter should look like but also allowing you to practice how your pencil will flow and glide across the paper while creating those letters. How instead of creating sharp point for the letter E you must keep everything rounded like in the letter O. How just one line can change whether you are writing the letter E or F. There are so many little things you have to pay attention to when writing. However, when you write with stencils then you can see what you are trying to create and it is harder to mess up then if you didn’t have the stencil there to help you. After using this tool I pretty much had writing down, I knew how to form letters and create words and eventually sentences.

By the third grade I was pretty good at reading and writing and the next tool I would use was working books. This tool combined my reading and writing skills together and prepared me for what I seemed like the rest of my school career would consist of, having to read something or questions then writing out the answer. Workbooks and worksheets soon went from a helpful tool to a pain. The simple and fun stories about two kids and a park and questions about the color of the slides didn’t last long. By middle school and then high school the passages weren’t as fun and became harder and the questions caused you to think a lot more and use more then what was just in the story but analysis came into play. However, it helped because it continued to build on my vocabulary and sentence structure while I was reading and then I could use those while reading and then I could take that to help with my writing as well.

My journey of learning to read and write is probably different from a lot of other people but the journey I went on allowed me to become a strong reader and write today. Because of the things I experienced and went through I was able to be put into a lot of advance classes. This helped me become more advanced and a strong student and because of that and the hard work I put into my education, I was able to get into Stevenson University and this will continue to push me one step closer to my goal of becoming a Pediatric Oncologist. To become a doctor it will be a lot of hard work and dedication and right now getting my major in nursing it will still be a long and tedious process. However, I will always remember the interactive games, flashcards, stencil books and workbooks because they helped me get to where I am today, and I will forever be grateful and continue to build on the things I already know to get me to my future career goal.