Important Literacy Events

I am a language arts major and have enjoyed reading from a young age. I think my love for reading started in second grade when I had Mrs. Heffner as a teacher. In first grade I didn’t particularly like reading because I wasn’t very good at it. I wasn’t very good at reading because I didn’t read often and I wasn’t required to read for homework. In Mrs. Heffner’s class for homework we had to read at least twenty minutes a day. I started out with books at the second grade level and with practice began to read more difficult books. By the end of second grade I was able to read and comprehend books at a sixth grade level. Not only did I have to be able to read these books I also had to be able to comprehend what I was reading. My class participated in AR, which was a program that allowed students to read a book and then take a comprehension test on the computer. If you passed the tests you got a star and when you received five stars you got a certificate for a free pizza. Throughout my schooling I enjoyed reading because I was good at it and Mrs. Heffner brought this quality out in me.

I started to enjoy writing at a later age when I was in Mrs. Busler’s seventh grade language arts class. I had always seen writing as a chore and as a young child I wasn’t very good at it. In kindergarten and first grade I used to write my letters backwards, so I avoided writing. In seventh grade we were learning how to write personal narratives and we wrote in our journals almost every day. Mrs. Busler made writing fun and interactive. During the writing process we had to discuss our writing with a partner and we also had a one-on-one conference with Mrs. Busler. I liked this one-on-one time because we could talk about what I needed to work on and also what was working in my writing. I began writing in a journal and my writing began to improve. This improvement was evident when I was placed in the advanced English program in ninth grade. I credit Mrs. Busler for sparking my interest in writing. I enjoy reading and writing and I have two wonderful teachers to thank for it. I hope that when I am a teacher I can inspire students to love reading and writing just like my teachers did.