Tag: narrative

Who am I? What makes me who I am? These are vital questions when growing up or getting to know people. I am Christian Beier, and at the current moment I am just a college athlete who’s going to school to get a major to have a career. When I was growing up there where a few things that helped me learned how to read and write. Those items were The Hobbit, The Leapfrog device, my teachers and my mom.

When I was much younger my mom said that we would always have story time before bed. One day she decided to switch the books around and grabbed The Hobbit. This was a paperback book with crinkled edges and a weird smell. We would sit on the couch together and she would start reading to me for 45 minutes to an hour. The Hobbit is about Bilbo Baggins a hobbit who live in the Shire. One day Gandolf the Grey, a wizard, comes to visit Bilbo and ask him to join the company of Dwarves to go take their home back. Bilbo then says no because Hobbits don’t leave the shire or go on adventures. Later that night one after another dwarves begin to arrive and once they had all arrived they ate all Bilbos food and drank all his ales. Then they ask Bilbo if he would accompany them back to their home the Lonely Mountain to take it back from the dragon Smaug. Bilbo still says no to them and so now the dwarves are extremely sad. The dwarves and Gandolf leave early the next morning without waking Bilbo. Bilbo then grabs his pack and bursts out the door running to meet up with the company. He finally makes it to them and says here’s the contract signed and then they welcome him to the company of Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Lonely Mountain. On their adventure they meet mountain trolls, cave goblins, elves, orks, and a dragon. In this story Bilbo meets Gollum another hobbit but one that has been corrupted by evil. Bilbo picks up a ring that belonged to Gollum. Gollum called it his precious. This is where Bilbo found the ring to rule them all. He then stole the ring from Gollum and by putting it on awoken the evil Sauron. This would end up leading to the Lord of the rings trilogy after this adventure ends. This book peaked my interest and lead me to read the other three books in this saga.

Another item that helped me learned how to read and write was the Leapfrog device and leapster. This device helped me learn on the go because it was portable and light. My mom didn’t care how much I was on it she was just happy that I was learning. There were games like batman where he threw a bat-a-rang and on it was a word and you would have to spell the word correctly or know the right definition that goes to it. Then there was another game where you had to shoot asteroids to get letters and those letters would spell a word and you would have to make the word base off the letters or a definition. This helped me learn how to spell and read while being more fun than what my teachers did.

My teachers are the last of the things that helped me learn to read and write. They did this using many techniques. Some of those techniques included using the alphabet, the large lined paper, spelling bees, and a few other techniques. When in the lower grades k-2 they emphasize the alphabet to help teach kids basic words like hat, cat, dog etc. The teacher would ask for a word that starts with a certain letter depending on when you were called on. Then teachers started using paper with large lines to help us learn to write the words we were saying instead of not knowing what these words look like. This is also when they taught us how legibility was important of writing and not being able to read and understand what we were writing on the page.

My mom is another influential literacy device because of her background. When she was in high school she had this English teacher called Mrs. Self and she was the meanest old lady to teach English. She made my mom learn proper English and grammar before college then when my mom went to college she had another teacher that was awful. One day he said that she was wrong and had her come up to explain why she was wrong and when she presented her side of the argument she ended up right. My mom learned proper English and grammar techniques and so from a young age she has made sure that every English paper she reread before I turned it in. She’d tell me and teach me about the English and grammar mistakes that were on the paper so once high school started I needed less help with my English papers.

Learn to read and right…. write?

If someone asked you “how/where did you learn to read and/or write?”, a question one would ask is “well where do I start?”. There is an eternity of factors that go into when you learned to read and write, where you learned to read and write, and how! Everything or everyone from books, pens and pencils to parents, teachers, siblings, and tutors. Even the little things such as reading street signs or reading labels at a grocery store contributes to the expansion of your knowledge and reading comprehension skills. The factors that stuck to me most were books, teachers, parents, and public readings (street signs, labels, etc.). Reading books increased my reading comprehension and expanded my imagination, while teachers were taking what I knew, and walking me a step further in reading and writing from year to year. Parents laid down the foundation for all basic reading and writing. Although these skills are very broad and general, they are core.

Teachers are truly a wonderful tribute to our everyday community. They take the time out of their own lives to teach what they know so you can prove what you know. They’re often parents of their own children, but while teaching, it’s not so hard to grow a bond with them that lasts an eternity. Date back to the beginning. Ms. Cull’s class, Kindergarten, 5 years old. I could still remember walking in to an ever-so-warm “Hello! Welcome to kindergarten!” with the sincerest of smiles. She was very short but at my age she was tall. The best learning experience one could experience is the feeling of knowing that you’re learning something and that you’re growing intellectually, and at the age of 5, all you’re doing is learning! Everything from learning the alphabet and learning numbers to learning cursive. Those are the few things that lay down the foundations of reading and writing. Skip a couple years to 2^nd grade, where you have the foundations of reading and writing, you start to learn to form paragraphs and put a multitude of thoughts into a–what we thought at the time was–a good piece of writing. Hearing the “good job” or “good work” is motivating and it’s another great attribute that teachers have, and it’s a prime example as to why they’re great at teaching to read and write. Middle School. Middle School. When you get to this level of learning, it’s a lot different than elementary school. The teachers are slightly stricter than their 5^th grade and below counterparts. They expect more out of you as you are getting older. Paragraphs get longer. Readings and books get longer and filled with much more complex vocabulary. Therefore, the teachers have to do more teaching. I can remember being in 6^th grade coming into my first class and not feeling exactly the same aura from my teacher as would’ve in 5^th grader or earlier. You start to go more in depth with your paragraphs, as they teach you what to include in your paragraphs, and eventually they turn into essays. Fast forward all the way to high school, and teachers are teaching you to read and write in preparation of a higher level of education. Whether it be college–community or a university, or some trade/schools of arts, it’s what they prepare you for. Now, here I am writing papers the way I do, primarily because of teachers.

Ah, books. Each one is vastly different from another. Everything from the cover of a book to the chapter structure, to the synopsis on the back! The great thing about books is that as before you even read one page of it, you have no idea how you’re going to feel about it after you finish. Not to mention the fact that you’re learning. With each unknown vocabulary word, with each old, Shakespeare-level difficulty language and/or jargon, you’re expanding your knowledge and opening up your mind to new things. Something as simple as Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the hat or Green Eggs and Ham had an effect on you as a child that you didn’t realize then, but when you look back on it, you see the long-term effect. Reading Christmas stories such as The Grinch who stole Christmas on Christmas eve with my mom or dad, smelling the snicker-doodle cookies and hearing “A Christmas story” play subtly on the TV in the background. Those moments that books create not only create family memories or childhood memories, but expand your knowledge exponentially. Only other thing that could do that is being in school itself! Books even in recent years can take you into another world you may have never thought of before. Just 2 years ago in 10^th grade I recall reading Lord of The Flies and feeling my mind go into an entirely different world with the plot of the story, the characters, the setting, and most importantly, the dialogue! Seeing the things you see in books often made my writing more creative and more whimsical, rather than just writing or typing words on a paper in a bland, rather “vanilla” type fashion. Even dating before that, in middle school I read The Giver and coming into middle school reading that, it opens up your vocabulary practically 10-fold. This helped me progress as a writer and as a reader. In Elementary school, you’re at the relatively basic level of reading, where you’re given a reading and you’re simply asked, “well what does this mean?” It’s simple but important. In 3^rd grade I can vividly picture my 3^rd grade teacher doing a read along and my mind going deep to the book. Granted, you weren’t being asked to go so in depth that it was to the point where you were analyzing the text, looking for multiple forms of rhetoric like you may have in high school. Nevertheless, as you read more challenging books, your reading comprehension increases and so does your reading level. Books are easily one of the foundational aspects of reading and writing.

Parents. The rather “tricky”, per se, part about parents when it comes to reading and writing is that their contribution is relatively heavy when you’re very young and not-so knowledgeable, and slowly dwindles or often drops off dramatically as you get older. At the most basic level possible, parents teach their kids to read and write starting from a few months old. Usually parents start off simple by teaching “ABC’s 123’s” or by just starting off with your name. My earliest memory possible memorable is me sitting on my mother’s lap at the age of 3, seeing her write out my name with all letters of the alphabet written out above my name, and hearing her say, “say Hi, my name is Marcus”. That meant a lot to me because even though it’s something we say every day without thinking about it, at that age it’s often a childhood milestone. When I was 4, I would always go to the bank with my dad every Saturday and every time I pronounce a word right on the roads as we drove there, I would be granted a lollipop from him when we actually got to the bank. This was small, yet important. It vastly increased my reading skills at a young age. Now, as you get a bit older, you require less help from your parents in terms of homework, learning, and intellectual growth. At the age of 11-14, they realized that sooner or later, I’ll be on the road just like them. They started teaching me what the different signs and warnings represent. Signs like “ROAD WORK AHEAD” were explained, as you can hear the jack hammers, construction trucks, and other tools/utilities gradually getting louder as you approach the road work. Trivial things like this weren’t pivotal per se, but they increase reading comprehension. Parents help set a foundation for everything you learn thereafter.

There are in fact a million other factors that contribute to the growth and expansion of your reading and writing, such as other relatives, friends and peers, and also smaller, often unnoticed things. Things like pen, pencils, paper, notebooks are needed in order to learn to read and write. However, teachers, books, and parents are the 3 core things that built up my reading and writing skills. Parents carried us through the grass field and dropped us off at the beginning of the forest of literature. Teachers guided me through the forest of literature, while books were the flashlight needed in order to see in the forest. So when people ask “where/how did you learn to read and write?” I would say “Well my parents, teachers, and books were a big chunk of the reason I can read and write the way I do.”

Nick Balcer

English 151

September 9th, 2018

Dr. Licastro

As a kid from a family of five, three brothers and one sister, also being the youngest finding time to read and write was a bit of a challenge. My family was not the normal family, none of my siblings are my real siblings, only half. Till I was about three I was on my own with toy phones and leapfrog, but also there were many times I would be read to before going to sleep. My favorite book was “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr. Suess. As I got older books started to get harder and harder as the years went on. Started reading books like “Captain Under” all the way to “To Kill A Mockingbird”. Reading was a challenge for me, but with the help of parents and grandparents it soon became a breeze.

My toy phone I used all the time, normally from morning to night. I would carry it around everywhere with me, you would never see me without it. This toy phone was blue, with squishy buttons. It was like a normal phone but you could not make any real calls or text messages. I would pretend that I could and would be on important business calls or pretend talk to my friends on it. I would also pretend to text on it, I had no idea what I was saying or typing. Quite honestly I do not think any of what I type was legible it was just me randomly hitting buttons as fast as I could. The phone was plastic so it had a very soft and smooth feel to it, while the smell, well it smelt like old plastic. I am pretty sure I never tasted it, but I am sure if I had it would taste almost like blue raspberries, cause why not its blue so it can taste like blue raspberries. You could here it cause when you would press a button it would beep or if you would hit the call button you could hear the ringer like you were getting a call. Now that I look back at how I used to use the phone and pretend to type and call, it was a good tool now because it can now type and send messages on m phone now at a rapid pace. And to see the similarities in the phones is almost weird, they both make sounds when you would use them. They all have buttons, although the one I have now is a touch screen. The toy phone also had a fake camera and if you would hit the camera button you could hear it click as if you had taken a picture, so I would go around to my family and have them smile or something and take a picture of them, now it didn’t work but my family were good sports and went along with me.

Being read to was probably the most beneficial to me learning how to read, I was read to everyday by either my mom or my grandmother. My grandma and I used to read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” every time we saw each other. Hearing how the words were pronounced and following along with the reading was great. I knew what was being said and how it was spelled by doing it that way. Sometimes when we came across a word I did not know I would have to sound it out and then say the word normally. Or other times I would have to write the word out myself while sounding it out. Most times though it was just them reading to me and me sitting and listening while if follow along. Often times I would follow along with my finger so I could learn to keep my place while they read and not get too distracted, but me not getting distracted is very hard. Some people say they find ways to get distracted but me, I feel it is ways to get distracted find me. Other than listening and following along, I would have to tell them what the paragraph we read or the chapter we read was about, I feel that not only helped me reading but also with reading comprehension because I was able to put into my own words the passage that was just read to me and I was able to describe it. The books usually smelt new, but it did not have a distinct smell to it and taste I never tasted the book so I can’t make a guess on how it tasted. It was usually a paper copy of a book so it wasn’t stiff and was able to be bent or folded, the book was not very old but wasn’t brand new, it was probably a book from one of my brothers but who knows, it could have been anyones before mine. When I go into Elementary school my mom bought me my first book “Captain Underpants” and I read the whole series about three times I loved it so much! Often times I would have to tell my mom or whoever a summary of the chapter or pages that I read to help me get better at reading comprehension. In Middle school I thought I was too cool for reading, I dreading reading, absolutely hated it. I have no reason why I did, but I did. I grew out of that once I got to high school and I had summer reading, I started to enjoy reading again. The books were not always interesting but I found something in the books I could relate to or at least tried to.

How I Learned

Learning in my household was a very important thing to my parents and they wanted to emphasize that to my sister and I from a young age. I am fortunate enough to have a very well-educated family, my mother attended Amherst College and her mother attended UPenn, where my aunt went and now my sister is attending now. Once my parents felt that we could retain what they tried to teach us, my parents would read to me and my sister before bed which then lead to us reading on our own together. And to make learning more enticing, my parents bought me and my sister games to play that had educational aspects within them. My dad would also make sure that even in the summer we were still doing something educational so we didn’t fall behind when we started school again. Along with just sitting at the dinner table and listening to the conversation being had, these aspects of my childhood developed me into being the student I am now.

Like many other children, books being read to me was the first taste of learning that I had from a young age. My parents would read to me, age 2, and my older sister, age 4, together at night, typically they read the Berenstain Bears to us. We loved those books and since my sister learned to read before I did, she would read the books to me as well when my parents couldn’t. I would then slowly pick up words and begin to sound them out and have my sister correct me since she had a basic knowledge of the words she could teach me new ones. Having both, my parents and my sister, read the books to me I could start to read the stories with some assistance a little earlier than most my age, around 3 and 4 years old. My parents also liked to hold me to similar standards that they held my sister to so that way I had a slight advantage. My grandmother also had a lot of the Berenstain Bears books at her house so when my parents were busy, my sister and I would read them together. Then once I was able to comfortably read those books on my own, I moved on to more difficult readings. I used to take out Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark from my elementary school’s library and loved to read those, even though they scared me pretty good. But those were some of the very few books I enjoyed reading when I could choose my own books. By having my parents and sister read to me, I was able to pick up reading with some ease as opposed to having me sit on the couch and just watch cartoons.

My fondest memory of learning was when I was the age of 5 when my parents brought home a V-Tech. I remember thinking at first that it was solely for fun and games like any other video game console is meant to be. But when I first started playing I quickly realized the games revolved around using logic and other mental skills to progress from level to level. The game I remember most was a game that had super heroes like Wolverine and Spiderman as the main character. You would go around doing many mini games as these characters and solve whatever problem was put in your path. One of these games had the objective of having to sort out various words as they fell down the screen and then put them in the right category of labelled bins. This game taught the player how to quickly decide what the words were and find the correct spot to put them in. Quick thinking was the skill that this game taught the player since they had to read the word and then match it with the right bin. Another game I recall very well was a game with Mickey Mouse, it followed him around as he had to get through a castle to save Minnie. This game was my favorite as there were mini games within it that incorporated timing and jumping from platform to platform while avoiding enemies. But the educational aspect of this game was the mini game that involved hand eye coordination along with literacy skills. The game involved words falling down the screen, and the player had to press the correct colored button on the controller as the word reached the bottom. Different colors on the pad meant whether the word was spelled correctly or not. This taught younger kids how to multitask in the sense of watching the screen and then knowing where each colored button was and then deciding if the word was spelled correctly or not. And the fact that the games were so fun for younger kids, they would keep playing repeatedly without even being aware that they were subliminally learning necessary skills. I know I would be glued to the screen for a long time just playing the same game constantly because I thought they were so fun and I wanted to be better than my sister. And it improved my spelling skills as I knew how to quickly identify when I spell something wrong or when someone else does.

One of my less enjoyable memories of learning was my dad giving me and my sister summer work booklets. These booklets were about 100-150 pages full of educational material that corresponded to the grade that my sister and I were entering the upcoming fall. Most distinctly, I remember the summer going into fourth grade, I was about 8 years old, the booklet had a lot of cursive in it. I was not too fond of cursive as I had, and still have, very bad handwriting so these exercises were especially difficult for me to complete. My dad would also be very thorough with his checking of our work, if he didn’t like the neatness of my writing, he would make me erase the whole page and start over. For at least an hour a day we had to work on these booklets or until we had reached a point where he felt that there was an adequate amount of progress made. Each booklet had a writing portion or some form of English along with math that was similar to what we already knew and some that would be introduced to us in the next grade. I despised these workbooks because I already didn’t like school to begin with, and now I was losing precious summer time to continue to do more school work. But in the end, I benefitted from being able to better my writing skills as there were even some prompts in the packet that my dad would read over and critique.

Because of my parents’ pressure on me and my sister to be educated and take our schooling seriously. Reading to us as young kids helped a lot with my reading skills along with other aspects of literacy for a good basis to grow off from once we began school. Making sure the games we played were also educational was another key factor in strengthening my developing mind for harder material I would learn in the future. And continuously working on something that related to school in the summer was another good tool to making sure that I stayed a good student even when classes weren’t in session. All these various pieces of my childhood are crucial to forming me to be the well educated person that I am today.

I am Ethan Jarmush and I grew up in Eldersburg, Maryland. I’ve always been quite laid back and don’t take anything too seriously. I enjoy reading books but not ones that are a requirement because I enjoy a very specific selection and I am a very slow reader. It’s surprising that reading faster was not something they practiced in school when they know that kids are going to have to read books in their later school careers and in a short time period. Now that I am 18 years old I am far beyond learning to read and write and am now expanding those abilities and making them better. But when i was just starting to learn at the age of 5, I didn’t know anything and I did whatever my parents or teacher told me to do without any complaints. Along with the specific tools I used, this allowed me to garner the right skills needed to learn to read and write.

Back when I was in Freedom Elementary school in kindergarten I had a teacher named Mrs. Hildenbrand. In the beginning of the school year she gave each of us a regular marbleized notebook that was called the “at home story response journal”. Each week she would require us to go the library and choose a book on a certain topic. We would have to read the book then either draw a picture or answer a question that was related to the book. I forgot this existed until I went home and sifted through my old school work from elementary school that my mom kept in storage. I found this notebook a little beat up because of how old it was and how little I cared about it since I was very young. I went through each page and read about all the books I read and all the questions I answered, most of which were very dumb but I didn’t expect myself at 5 to be giving a college level analysis of Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake. There was all different kinds of books I used to read and a surprising amount of these books were about animals like a Zoo book or a national geographic book. This helped me to learn all the different types of animals, what they looked like, what they sounded like, and where they lived, which also incidentally helped me learn all the different places around the world. There was also notes on how I was doing in class like if I needed to read more fluently, which was usually my problem. This allowed my parents to help me work on those subjects before bed by having me read some books to them which allowed them to give me pointers on what I can do to improve my reading. Half of the writing in the questions I answered was spelled wrong which is surprising to me because I would have thought my parents would have helped me answer the questions. But I guess it was for the best that I learned on my own what I should and shouldn’t do in those types of situations.

At about the same time that I was completing these journals, there was a computer game called Pajama Sam. It was about a young kid named Sam who dressed up as his favorite superhero, Pajama Man, and defeated his nemesis, Darkness. This may sound stupid but when I was about 5 years old this game was glorious. It was a very simple point and click game from the late 90’s where you solved puzzles and explored the world. Most of the world you could interact with and it would make a wacky noise when you clicked on something of interest all while a nice little soundtrack would play in the background of each zone. I must have beaten that game 100 times before I realized there was not only many sequels to the game, but there were many books as well. SInce I was really into reading back then, I had to get myself a copy of the book. This book was entitled Pajama Sam: Mission to the Moon and was about Pajama Sam having to turn up the moon light then try to find a way back to Earth. Just like the game, I finished that book many times before I went to bed because it not only helped me become a better reader by becoming more fluent and pronouncing difficult words, but also because I just really enjoyed it.

Along with Pajama Sam, there was another educational type of system that helped me learn. I know a lot of kids back then had one of these and it was the LeapPad learning system. It came in a big bulky green and blue case that opened up to reveal the book you would earn to read with. It even came with it’s own stylist and you would insert a cartridge into the side of the case that would help you along with the book. All the different types of books you could get are interactive and they will make sounds, play music, and allow you to play games on it. Due to my young age this really intrigued me and ended up using it a lot in my free time. It not only entertained me quite a lot but it really helped me learn to read because if I didn’t know a certain word, I could tap it and have it spelled out, read aloud, or even sounded out which got me my basic understand of many words at a young age.

Also in the boxes full of my old schoolwork, I found a ton of that old tannish colored lined paper that had the two solid lined with a lot of room between them and a light dotted line in the middle of them. I remember using this paper a lot in second grade in Mrs. Johnston’s class. I wrote a lot of different stories and school work on this type of paper and it allowed me to practice my handwriting and write the letters and words correctly. I brought back one of these papers to my dorm and this story was about Pokémon and how my dad bought me a Pokémon game and some new cards. This must have obviously been very exciting to me if I chose to practice my writing in school. I had a blank piece of paper stapled to the back of this paper of a bunch of Pokémon that I drew and named. There was a comic series called spy vs spy about two spies trying to kill each other in each comic which sounds pretty brutal for a 6 year old to be reading but it was light hearted and humorous so it was okay. But I remember writing a ton of different spy vs spy stories on these papers of my own fights between the two spies. This helped me not only become better at writing letters but allowed me to become a better writer in general and better at getting stories and ideas onto paper. These stories that I wrote influenced me today because I may end up becoming a screenwriter/director and practicing writing stories since a young age really helped me focus on what is good story writing and what I should keep out of my stories.

This process of learning to read and write will influence my future because no matter what profession I go into, reading and writing, especially at the college level, is a major skill that all jobs require. If I choose to be a business owner then I can relate these skills to that but I choose to be a screenwriter then reading and writing will be almost all of what I will be doing. Getting all my ideas down coherently and using excellent vocabulary are things that I’ve been improving since I first started how to read and write.

Today, many people use the phrase “reading is fundamental” but why is it fundamental and how is it that people learn to read? As days, months, and years pass by one thing never changes and that is that reading is everywhere street signs to exit signs in college dorm rooms. One thing you should ask yourself is why is reading fundamental? It is because words are everywhere they describe an object, tells the location of a place and more. I will be explaining four tools that helped me learn as a child.

One tool that helped me learn to read was food. Have you ever asked a child what do they want when you go to a fast food restaurant.? You will notice the child will point to the image and say “that. For myself as a child I had to say what “that” specifically was, for an example my mother and I love to go to Ledo’s we would always order a large pizza with pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and onions. I used to read the menu to order eight hot wings, hot wings are my favorite Ledo’s have great wings and the celery and ranch that comes with it taste very fresh. My mother gets a side Caesar salad, and, in my opinion, they have the best dressing in the world. I never liked any other dressing than ranch. My mother knew I liked the salad, but I never passed up the wings. When the waitress came to the table to place our order I was to recite my order from what I read off the menu this allowed me to gain comprehension skills. When I read the menu. I knew what will come on my pizza and how many wings I will receive. Another way food helped me learn to read was when I went to Wendy’s. My mother always wanted to sit inside the building, why? I have no idea, but, she would order a number one with a baked potato and tell them to add butter and extra chives, no sour cream and no matter how many times they repeated no sour cream back to her somehow sour cream would magically appear in her bag. I used to look at the menu for a long time, sometimes I would try to read before I walked to the front of the line because I noticed I become highly indecisive when food is involved. Because of this I learned to proofread. Proofreading gave me clarity to be confident in what I was saying. The description would be detailed and as I read I had to explain that I do not want ranch on my chicken sandwich. My going to these restaurants it allowed me to read deliberately.

Another tool that helped me learn was LeapFrog. LeapFrog is a device that has been out for a little more than twenty years that mixes fun with learning. LeapFrog had a huge impact on my learning adventure. I started using LeapFrog when I was in elementary school. I loved the games because it did not feel like I was working; the games that are placed in the LeapFrog device was fun I would be in my room and it felt like I was playing a g

ame although the game was enhancing my mind. I played one game where after I was done with the learning part I could play a game to get as many coins as I could and jump to the other side without being wiped out. That part of the game I remember that was fun is that I was able to color a barn. I could pick what I colors I wanted to use which was overall fun for me. Leapfrog is great for kids to learn and be able to enjoy themselves as they do it and an advantage Leapfrog has is that they have programs for children that are six to eleven months old and as a child grows older, it will only make the child want to keep playing the games which will mean they will continue to learn. LeapFrog taught me vocabulary words, how to break the words down and sound them out.

Next, television was and still is a way I learn. Television has many ways for children and adults learn, for children, shows like Dora, go on many adventures and engages with the children through the screen by asking questions. Television shows like Hip Hop Harry grasp kids who are into

music. Hip Hop Harry would have the kids sing and dance along to one of the raps he came up with. One of the raps are called “Dream It! Achieve It”. He encouraged kids to read not only to learn but for fun and a tactic the show used was that they have actual kids in the show to make it seem like learning is fun and cool. The show would give the kids on the show a reward of a live concert because they read the most books. According to BBC news, “Children from the ages five to sixteen spend six in a half hour a day in front of a screen compared with around three hours in 1955, according to market research firm Childwise. Teenage boys spend the longest, with an average of eight hours.” Learning shows like that target what kids think is fun will always be effective and it was fun for me because of how catchy and how interactive it is.

Kids are young, and they want to learn however, it has to grasp their attention. That’s why television is a good way to get children to learn, it is colorful and shows characters that will use catchy tactics to make them want to learn.

Lastly an effective tool that help me learn is rewriting words repeatedly. This allowed items I just learned to stick in my head. Some examples are my name, my name was a good way to start off because it is three letters and my last name is four letters. After learning to spell my name I was able to do that with numbers. The first number I memorized was my mother’s cell phone number because she made me write it until I was able to say it back to her without looking this was great in case of an emergency I was able to give someone a contact number. This tactic is the same for flashcards when someone is repeating a vocabulary word back to themselves it’s to try and memories the way it is written the sound makes and by repeating it back to yourself the sticks like glue.

In conclusion there are many ways for you to learn, I listed four great examples such as menus at restaurants, learning gadgets such as Leapfrog, shows on television and lastly the repetition of words. These are the few of many things that have shaped me into the person I am today. Learning does not stop at a certain age. I am eighteen years, and by the time I am forty there will still be more things in the world for me to learn. Learning does not have to feel like hard labor, in fact the more fun it is the more likely you want to learn and push yourself to do better.

I am Nicholas McNerney, most of you probably do not know who I am. I am a student athlete, aspiring business man, and determined man of my work. It all started back when I used to read “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss, with my mother. If I was not reading about Green eggs and Ham, I was mostly on the field. Football is where I blow off steam. As a kid, I always looked up to my dad, who came in from work roughly around seven. At that time, my mom was cooking up some of her famous Sunday sauce. As I sat at the kitchen table reading “The Cat in the Hat”, I hear the door slowly starting to open as I see my dad walking in from a long day of work. I was too young to realize it then, but as I started to mature, I realized that the real world requires hard work and determination. You see, my dad worked seven days a week to pay the bills to make sure the family was happy. Now that I am grown, I quickly understood what it is like to work seven days a week. As being a student athlete my whole life, I have never had so high expectations to succeed not only on the field, but in the classroom.

It was a hot summer afternoon, and I had just come home from my first day of kindergarten. I was very excited to see my mom after a long day of school. On the other hand, I was excited to receive my first actual book called, “The Cat in the Hat”. The only problem was, that I did not know how to read. My mother was a great multitasker. As my mom was making dinner, she was also teaching me how to read my first book. We started out with the introduction page. She asked to read the authors name of the book, and I said, “Dur Suss”. Little did I know, it was correctly pronounced “Dr. Seuss”. That was just the beginning. The words became harder and harder every page we went through. I could smell my mom’s cooking and wanted to stop and eat for a quick second. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours. At that point my mother taught the trait of procrastination. There was no time to goof around. I had to get back to work if I wanted to catch my daily cartoon show, if I wanted to be in bed by eight. We started to get into depth of the book and I started to feel myself already becoming a better reader. It took time, but it became an ease. I can start to hear my cartoon show coming closer to me. It was a sign of success and it was not fading away. The words started to become more difficult as the book went on. I was just learning how to read, so the words did not make any sense to me. My mother told me, “It takes some time, but you will get it”. We took a break for dinner, but it was back to work right after that. While we ate, she told me to remember the words that I have learned, because they will appear again sooner or later. My brother then walked in and sat down. He looked depressed, so I asked him if he wanted to help me read. A smile came to his face as we went into the living room. Our living room smelled as if my mom cooked our dinner in that very spot. We started from where my mother and I had left off. We came to a word that I had no idea what it was, how it was said, etc. So, my brother made it easy for me. He made me spell it out first before we did anything. So, I spelled it out. Then, he made me sound it out and put it all into one. It worked, and I finally figured out the word. We finished the book and I said thank you to my brother and it was time for bed. As my mom went to tuck me in, she looked into my eyes and said, “You just read your first book”! I went to bed with a smile, and it became one of the happiest days of my life.

Years went by, and I made my way intoelementary school. It was another tough part of my life because reading became a bigger challenge to me. The words became more of a difficultly to me and harder to pronounce. I was put into a class to learn how to read. It was not a class for everyone but more of one to help the children that need it. I was in Northvale Elementary School, and my teacher, Mrs. Vialonga, decided it was time to read our first book. We started to read, “Diary of a Wimpy kid”. These words were a blur to me and I had no idea what any even meant. That’s why I was in the class I was in. We started the first page and I was called on to read the first paragraph. I got passed the first couple words and came to a stop. I could not pronounce the word and I was embarrassed. Students started to laugh at me, but my teacher did not. My teacher paused, and said, “Nick, what’s wrong”? I said, “I cannot pronounce this word”. She wrote it on the board for me and not just the word, but she separated it for me, so I can get the sound of it down. Once she taught me that way of reading words, it became an ease for me just like it did with my brother. I got through another problem with reading and my reading has never be the same from years on. I have become one of the best readers I can be from learning with my mom, my brother and my teacher. There’s a chance, I can enhance my reader to even bigger level. It all it just takes time and practice.

Finally, I arrive into Old Tappan Highschool. I am becoming more of an adult realizing my future is just up ahead. It was September 9^th, 2013, and I was about to walk into my first English class of my freshman year. Thinking to myself, that it is syllabus week, and we would not have any work. I was wrong. The first thing we did was read our first book. We were assigned to read, “The Hobbit”. I started to read the first chapter in my classroom, and I had no idea what any of the words were trying to tell me. My teacher, Mr. Conner, saw me struggling from his desk. He came to me, and said, “What’s wrong”? I did not know what to say and my mind was blown. My teacher gave me the best solution to my problem and it was to annotate my words and phrases. I did not know what he meant at first, then he taught me, and it changed my life. He explained to me, that when you highlight and write a little summary about what you read, it makes it easier to realize what the story is trying to point out. I took the advice, and I have never been more impressed with my reading in my life. I never used to like to read books, but with the new tips I have learned, I kind of like it.It took my level of reading to a new peak and I was ready to move on to bigger challenges in my future. I am ready for anything to come my way and there is nothing that is going to step in my way.

Reading has become one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. I would of never knew that reading was so important in the learning experience and even future job experience. Starting out, being in kindergarten reading, “The Cat in the Hat”, and leaving high school reading, “The Hobbit”, knowing what it means in every word, is an accomplishment. My mother always taught me, that when you start something, you better finish it. In my life, I do not go down without at least gaining a little more knowledge about my future, and there is still more to come. I look back to what I have done in the past and I think that none of it was possible at the time. Now, I feel like anything is possible, it just takes time and effort. I live my life one day at a time and I work on what is at hand at that time of the day, no matter what it might be. I never thought that my life would go so fast, but time is running out to be a kid and a student. One of these days, I am going to be a real adult and have a job, and I will look back to all of these memories and think this is where I started. I do not know what my future holds in store for me, and I do not know what is going to happen in my college life. One thing I do know is that I am not going down without a fight and there is no obstacle or challenge that I am going to let stop me from becoming who I am and to let me not become a man. My parents and teachers guided me through half of my life and now it is time for me to step in and take control. This is my life.