Reading and Writing have had an immense impact on my life as well as many others.  The ground work for anyone is being literate.  This is how we obtain the things in life we need to become successful individuals, but we all didn’t just start out knowing how to read and write and be functional.  As a nineteen-year-old, I am fully literate and I have graduated from Lacey Township High school, in Forked River New Jersey.  I have moved on in my academics to higher education at Stevenson University where I am successful on the soccer field and the classroom.  With all this being said, there were some influences and devices that helped me get to this point.  Without being literate, there is no way any of my success so far in life would be remotely possible.

Furthermore, as far back as I could remember I believe the process of becoming literate started around age 5.  I was in kindergarten, I had Ms. Smith as my teacher and every morning we would play this spelling game.  The game consisted of using red plastic spelling blocks and the first student to spell the word Ms. Smith asked us to spell, won that round.  The competition of the game inspired me to win every round and as a 5-year-old my spelling dramatically improved in a short window of time.  Also as a part of that class, we used an online computer tool called reader rabbit.  It was a game that had a story behind it but the only way to continue the story was to spell certain words correctly at different checkpoints along the way.  I also took this as a competition and I tried to finish the story as fast as I could.  It would record your completion time when you were finished so I always tried to beat the time I had previously.  These two ways of reading and spelling really improved my literacy and gave me the building blocks to move in a positive direction with my education.

To continue, as I progressed into the higher elementary grades there were two things we always did to improve our reading and writing.  In about first grade, we started doing our weekly spelling tests and story completion.  It composed of receiving a set of words at the beginning of the week and throughout the week performing tasks like using the words in a sentence or writing them down ten times each to better engrain the words in our minds.  At the end of the week we would have a test on how to spell all the words and test would be graded.  As far as our reading went, we were given a book to read throughout the week and at the end of the week we were asked to recall the events of the book in a test.  These two processes help me personally greatly because it was an opportunity to learn more complex words and it forced me to read the books thoroughly because I knew would have to recall the events of the book in a test format.  Naturally, the words and the books got harder as I progressed from grades 1-6 but the same ideas were used and it trained me to be ready for real novels in my middle school grades that were on the horizon.

As my progression continued in my educational career, I moved onto junior high and middle school years.  This is where I actually started to like reading after discovering a few good books.  The most memorable of these books was The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  The books have a decent amount of pages that were written in a mature way but at the end of every page there was an illustration.  It made it easier for me to put the characters and plots together at the time.  These books really prepared me for the more complex books I would have to read in my later years.  Another book I really enjoyed and benefitted from was a book called Chasing Lincolns Killer.  I enjoyed the realness of the historical events and it intrigued me to continue my reading further in any way I could.  These two types of texts in general really helped me propel myself into higher reading.

After being so interested in reading in my middle school years, I began to drift from daily reading.  It was not until my Senior year that I got back to reading.  I had to do some research for my Senior Paper and I stumbled on some articles that were referred to me by my English teacher.  I enjoyed the articles so much that I subscribed to a few websites and began reading them daily.  I felt like this really expanded my learning even though I don’t have a specific book to read.  It made me really enjoy reading again and I have continued this habit today.

To summarize, It’s pretty evident that my Literacy has come a long way since my Computer reading games days, and I have many teachers and my parents to thank for that.  I hope continue increasing my literacy throughout the future and especially here at college.  Most importantly, I won’t forget how I got to this point.  Its been a long Journey to get to this point but it has definitely been beneficial for me.  I feel like I’m well prepared and ready to get a job and make a living thanks to the people that helped me along my Literacy Journey.

Reading at a young age every chance given

I would describe myself as someone who has common sense, is open minded, and observant. Im trying to teach myself to fashion design, though I’m into drawing generally, I realized my interest in combining different clothes. Ultimately, that resulted me in doing fashion sketches and looking into that as a career.

Having a preference for reading over other things such as watching tv, I feel, made me someone who is open to receiving knowledge because at that age I was reading for a hobby. I recall a literacy book that changed color every school year, which was vital in my literary foundation. When I reached 5th grade, I was still reading, but probably only every night.

However in 5th grade, I won a spelling bee, which was pretty important to me at the time. I had a scheduled dentist appointment, which I almost went to but changed my mind at the last minute. When I was one of two remaining, I spelled the word “gnat” wrong because I thought there was a k instead of a g. Then my peer spelled faucet wrong, and I spelled it right along with another word resulting me in winning. This was a special moment to me because I knew I read more than most of my classmate so I believed I had a chance of being one of the last people in the bee, but I ended up winning the honor, a dictionary, thesaurus and a bag of candy. Then my dad took me to dinner.

My parents, especially my father being a teacher at the time, always encouraged me to read and helped me with writing during the time I had to take a writing class. I had a teacher, whose class I did well in after struggling a little, and a reading teacher ,whose class wasn’t difficult at all. Reading included vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and things like that, whereas writing included writing, writing, and more writing. The reading was much easier because it was something that I not only did frequently, but loved as well. The more books I read, the more vocabulary I used, and spelling and grammar came hand in hand with that. I was able to use these skills in not only my reading class, but also my writing class.

My favorite children’s writer is probably R.L Stine’s. His Fear series, along with his goosebumps books had a lasting effect on me. My love for mysteries, the human psyche, and thrillers, have all stemmed from reading R.L Stine, Caroline Cooney’s “Janie Series”, and other 80’s and 90’s books “fingerprints series” by Melissa Metz, that an older cousin gave to me (that had amazing cover art) my father brought from work as well as the scholastic book fairs that I started seeing less of as I got older. I remember overwhelming my dad to bring me specific books and I would have rather kept them than return them because I wanted the chance to read them over and over again.

The book showed below is a gem that I got for free on amazon kindle. It was a political kind of mystery book in which a fatal car accident is blamed on an individual with a lower status and it turns out theres an entire conspiracy behind it. I read this book in one night and I remember thinking about it for the next few weeks. Although I was completely satisfied with the conclusion of the book, it ended with a cliffhanger that I still think about.

Currently, I’m reading 3 completely different books, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, which I have owned for most of my life, but have prolonged reading. You are a Badass: How to stop Doubting your greatness…,by Jen Sincero, and a book by George Pelecanos, that I don’t remember the name of. Lately, I recognize that my digital use has also kept me reading. If I’m watching a movie that I enjoy. I dive further into the story by reading interviews, for example the movie City Of God, had an intriguing history behind it, that I found out only through readings on the real story and even the actors who portrayed the people they were based on.Purdue OWL has always been a tool that teachers have stressed to use when citing or annotating; it is helpful, but I don’t use it because some of their examples are specific and I find that I would always try to model my sentence structure after theirs when starting my essays

Im not sure if writing will help me in the career that I’m planning for myself yet, however I am open to learn any skills that I may need.

Reading,it is one the fundamental skills you learn in life.You can find stuff to read every where from street signs to posters on a wall words  can be found every where you go. But the journey of understanding what those words mean is specific to each individual.  Everyone’s journey to learning is different mine began with listening.

Ever since I could remember I have loved hearing stories. Weather it was people’s anecdotes, music, cars on the street any thing. I was one of those kids would look through photo albums and asking about every picture. But my favorite thing was when my mom would lie down next to me and my two sisters, Michaila and Jaqui, in our row Baltimore city row home and read us bed time stories. Most of them where Doctor sues books, like One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and she would have us look at the pictures and follow along with the worlds. That was my experience with learning how to read.

Unfortunately my road to learning how to read and write would be a difficult and long one. I started to learning the alphabet during pre-k and kindergarten. Once I got to first grade I was diagnosed with ADD as well as a form of Dyslexia, witch I wouldn’t find out until I was older. This meant I was extraordinary bad at reading as well as writing especially spelling. When I started reading I would get the letters mixed up or the words just didn’t click in my head. It felt like I was reading the same sentence over and over but all I could look at the letters and they just wouldn’t form words. When heard it read out loud I was fine but reading just didn’t click or it felt like my brain was just putting the pieces slower. some how I don’t remember being too frustrated, just determined to overcome this challenge.

One night I faced it head on stayed up reading into a five year old’s version of the late hours of the night, aka nine thirty. But I didn’t have a clock so who knows. After I got ready for bed I laid wide awake in my top bunk waiting for my other two sisters to fall asleep so I wouldn’t wake them up with the lamp attached to my bed. In order  to keep them from waking up I had the lamp turned down low enough for them to not notice but strong enough for me to see the text and pictures on the pages of the slightly used copy of the book witch I read over and over again until I basically had the book memorized.

Another incident that kept me motivated was in second happened in second grade. Went one day I went up to my grandmothers house and she presented me with a case full of old Nancy Drew books from her childhood. I instantly fell in love with the way covers looked in that the out side of the pages had a different color then the inside, I loved the illustrations inside. The books also made me feel older and smarter. After I brought them home I would walk around reading them despite the fact that I didn’t really understand what was going on in the story I still thought it was thrilling. Not long afterwards I found some graphic novels that revolved around her and her adventures. I read those several times as well. Loving every single page of it.

After I grew out of my Nancy Drew phase I entered my Percy Jackson phase. One fateful summers day I was sitting at home when my mom brought me a book as and the audio book called Percy Jackson. Once I saw the cover my curiosity was spiked when  I saw in the cover a three headed dog! So I wasn’t planning on doing anything that day I decided to read it. Once I started I count stop. I was enthralled with the adventure, danger, likable characters and Greek mythology and once I finished the first one I immediately asked if their was a sequel and too my surprise there already was! So I  immediately read that one as well and after that one I found out that the next one was coming out next year. From then on I decided to make it a tradition to read each Percy Jackson book that comes out during the summer.

When I was reading Percy Jackson I discovered that one of the reasons that I could get through them so quickly was because of the audio books that I read along to. In my senior year of high school I would find out that I process information more efficiently but I am a slower visual learner. This probably explained why I work better when I am listening to an audio book then when I am just reading a book and why like audio books more then the average person. The only reason I say that is because when I have time to my self, when I’m not watching a movie or going out with friends, I am most likely listening to a classic, such as Cater in the Rye, Sherlock Homes, Jurassic Park, on audio book while sipping a cup of black tea in a fun mug with some homemade scones on the side. While I color in an adult coloring book. I some times this convinces me that I am secretly an old person inside especially when  tell people my age that I do this. Most the responses range from that sounds very British to some weird looks but I find it very relaxing, so who cares because it’s some thing that I recovered all on my own

I wasn’t alone through all of this I had a lot of help from both my parents as well as specialists such as one named Ms.Reed who helped me out. Half way through first grade my family packed are bags from that row home in Baltimore city and moved to Baltimore County where where we would live in a medium sized row home for the next eight years. Once I started school there I would start what I would call “Extra reading class” with two other students named Katy and Jack.

The girl Katy was nice also had trouble with reading the boy named Jack was the second most hyperactive child I have ever met in my life. In fish grade he had to put books on his lap just to stay still in his chair. The three of us would continue to be in each others lives until High school where Katy transferred in to a private school and Jack and I ran in different crowds. During those classes we would go over words and phrases reading them out loud as well as spelling them. We did this by reading books out loud as well as reading out flash cards, sounding out parts of words and building our vocabulary as a whole. Another thing that we did was working on our hand writing and learning how to hold a pencil properly. Jack and I where the only one’s in this part of the class. but over all my hand writing is little better off for it.

In the end I was passion for story telling, determination and active listening I can now read and write as well as I do.

My name’s Maria Ziegler, I’m originally from Elkton, Maryland. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood called West Creek Village and lived with my mom, Dawn, my dad, Kevin, and my older sister Christina. My mom’s originally from South Philly while my Dad was born in Canada and was moved to Newark Maryland at a young age. Unfortunately, my mom had to move away from her family to live in Cecil County because of my dad’s business. I saw my mom’s side of the family a good bit but not as much as I would’ve liked to growing up. Although when I did visit my mom’s side it was always a really good time. They’re all Italian, meaning gatherings with them were always incredibly loud and chaotic. My dad’s side of the family is basically the polar opposite, German and Irish.

My very first memory of reading or writing goes all the way back to kindergarten. My teacher’s name was Ms. Jackson. I don’t remember too much about her besides her voice. I remember she would talk very loud and she never really used big words that I couldn’t understand. She could talk to us like she understood what was going on in my brain, I liked her for that reason. I would walk in the classroom after saying bye to my mom and I would put my big puffy jacket, my lunch, and my book bag into my cubby. Ms. Jackson had us all sit at big round tables. I can distinctly remember her teaching us how to write letters. At first she would give us one to work on, and if we did it right we would get another. I remember working on the letter ‘lowercase A’. I was tracing it on the big stencil that she passed out but for some reason I kept confusing it with ‘uppercase O’. I still remember what she said to me to this day. She told me to pretend to pretend that the lowercase O was a beach ball. You don’t want your beach ball rolling away in the wind, so you have to put a stick next to it to keep it in place. Even today I imagine my lower-case A’s as beach balls with sticks next to them so they don’t roll away.

Eventually, I attended Cecil Manor Elementary School which was about 5 minutes from where I lived. The most prominent memories I have at that point in my life had more to do with recess and playing outside than anything else. I do distinctly remember though one of my favorite teachers as a kid, Ms. Ricketts. Looking back now I realized how young and new to the job she probably was but when I was younger I was convinced she knew everything. I looked up to her because she didn’t teach like the rest of the teachers did, she said things in ways that we could relate to them and she understood that we were just kids. She didn’t expect the world from us or force things out of us. I just remember having a lot of fun in her class. A few times a week we would have reading groups, and each group would meet at a certain table according to which level reader you were. Somehow I ended up in the advanced reading group, and a few times a week a woman would take us to a different room and assign us different books than the other kids were reading. The reading room was a small room filled with a few chairs. Some days we would popcorn read our books, while other days we quietly read to ourselves. After reading certain chapters or finishing the book we would talk about it in a big group, discussing things such as our favorite characters or how we felt about the book. Over time I developed a lot of confidence in my reading and I began to enjoy it.

Another big reading mile stone for me is something small but for some reason I vividly remember it. One day my dad took me to Barnes and Nobles, I was somewhere around the age of 7 at the time. There was a music stand in the corner of the store that held all types of CD’s on it. A set of headphones was connected to the stand so you could sample different CD’s or listen to certain songs. I remember putting the headphones on while my dad was in line buying coffee, I chose to listen to The Beach Boys album. I instantly fell in love. It was their 2003 album “The Sounds of Summer”. My dad walked over with a big smile on his face, surprised with the album I picked out. He said “Do you want me to buy that for you?” I obviously said yes. Then he asked,

“What does the front of the CD say?” I remember staring at the big swirly letters blankly. I couldn’t read it. “If you like their music so much you ought to know who wrote it”, he insisted. We walked to the counter to buy the CD, meanwhile I trailed behind staring at the cover trying to make sense of the abstract letters. On the way home we played the album in his truck listening to the single ‘I Get Around’ while I continued to stare at the letters. My dad, noticing my frustration, turned the music down and said, “What’s that big letter in the beginning?”

“A big B..?”, I answered half confidently.

“Okay good, now just try to figure out the rest of the letters.”

I knew what cursive was and we had practiced it in school, but these letters weren’t really cursive or print. They were a weird hybrid of the two, which threw me off. Eventually, I accepted the fact that the words on that album cover remained foreign to me and just enjoyed the music. I still look back at that album today and remember how much I struggled trying to read the simple words ‘The Beach Boys’.

Sixth grade was when I transferred to a private school called ‘Tome’. My favorite teacher while I was there being my reading and writing teacher, Mrs. Hawk. She was a tall, thin, young woman with thick dark brown hair. She frequently carried around a silver thermos and had an intense passion for hiking and bird watching. Her room was filled with a variety of nature posters along with books full of all the different species of birds. Mrs. Hawk’s classroom was always so welcoming, full of big open windows and lingering positive energy. In the back-left corner of the classroom, carefully protected by Mrs. Hawks L-shaped desk, was our class pet; A Newt. On top of the uplifting environment, I favored that class a lot for what we did in there. I can’t remember it all, but I do remember being given the freedom to simply just write. I didn’t have to worry about any fancy punctuation or run on sentences, I could essentially word vomit on paper. I enjoyed doing this a lot, I think mostly because at that age I had so many ideas flying around in my head that I didn’t want to have to filter and edit. I didn’t want to articulate them or make them more ‘proper’, I just wanted to throw them down on paper as they came to me without concern of if it met any special standards. Mrs. Hawk gave me the chance to do that, and it made writing a lot more enjoyable for me.

In retrospect, these milestones may seem minute or trivial, but they must have greatly impacted me if I can still reflect on them many years later. Insignificant things such as help with writing a basic letter or trying to decode the name of my favorite album at the time have all shaped me into the person I am today. I owe a lot to my family and teachers that took that extra five minutes to help me understand something or learn something new. As I move forward into my future endeavors I continue to learn and grow as a student. I’m able to take everything that I’ve learned over the years and put those skills into my biology lab reports. The reading and writing skills I have learned over time will allow me to write adequate care plans for my future patients. I’m thankful for everyone that put their time into me to help shape me into the person I am today.

Throughout my 14 years of school, I’ve always been ahead in of my peers when it came to literacy. I always passed both my MSA’s and HSA’s with advanced, my lexile score was always at least two grades higher than the grade I was in, and each year I always ended English with at least a B. If it weren’t for the tools and teachers that helped me along the way, I wouldn’t be the proficient reader that I am today.

August 22^nd 2000, Richmond VA. Looking back, preschool was the easiest school level to be in. The Learning Playhouse, now owned by Mrs. Milette Allison, is where I got my literacy start. The playhouse wasn’t always the  big beautiful daycare that it is now. It used to be a tiny building that had  six rooms.Each room was a color of the rainbow. The Red Room (the reading room), The Orange room (the lunch room), The Yellow Room (the play room), The Green Room (the lunch room) The Blue Room (the nap room), and last but not least The Purple room which were just the bathrooms. Throughout the day we’d all transition rooms depending on what time of day it was. We would always start out in the reading room. This room always reminded me of reading a book on a hill under an apple tree on a bright beautiful day. It had lots of reading posters that always had an encouraging message and smelled like warm cinnamon apple pie.

“Okay class, pick a square”. Mrs. Milette would say. “Today we’re going to read Dr. Seuss’s ABC book together”. She said cheerfully yet with a stern determined tone. Typically, every one in day care knew their ABC’s but this time we’d also have to read the words that followed the big bold letter. Reading seemed like a challenge for most kids, but with me, I excelled faster than the rest.

The following year my family and I moved to Hampton VA, to a nice area called Willow Oaks. Right up the street from my home was a catholic school called Gloria Day. I started and finished both Pre-K and Kindergarten there before we came to Maryland. There I was introduced to the book that taught me to read on my own without any assistance.

Bob books were books that allowed pre-k through K  level to master the literacy skill without any help. Every night we were required to read at least three Bob books to our parents and get a signature when we finished. Once we finished the first volume of books, we had to start the second level. As we moved on to the different levels, the reading became longer and more challenging. However, the great part about the tasks is whoever finished all five volumes of the Bob books would earn a gift card to Toys R US. Of course being one of the highest readers in my grade, I was a proud owner of the Toys Are US gift card.

In 2004 my family and I had our last move. Aberdeen MD, is where I began the first grade. The transition from two different states didn’t settle that well with me. I didn’t like my new school and because I had a high score in the reading department in Kindergarten, I was placed in a higher reading course that was pretty intimidating. Coming home from school every day with a book bag full of reading material that was hard to comprehend, began giving me head ache to the point where I no longer wanted to be in the class. However, my mom who is an educator, didn’t believe in dumbing down material because the course work was too hard. She believed that one could learn from the material if it was taught a different way. So my mother and I made flash cards, we had reading time, and we go to the library every Friday to pick out a new book. Having my mom patiently work with me to increase my reading comprehension is the reason I scored so high on all of my standardized testing in the reading category.

The process of learning how to read will determine my future because it taught me the basic ways to tackle any new task. Looking back, I see the determination it took to learn material I was very unfamiliar with, and I was able to feel and see how proud I was to earn all advanced scores and be placed higher than my peers felt. This prepares me for life because if I use the same attitude and skills that I used to learn how to read, then I can learn how to do anything in my profession in school and my career to be successful.