I remember looking in books with sentences with simple words like “a, I, and, the, it” and between those words were illustrated pictures of something and below it the name of it. For example you would see a picture of a ball and below it was the word ball. I could always recognize the words “I” and “a” (because they come straight from the alphabet), I suppose I memorized the sounds of “and, the, it” and eventually got used to it.
The most effective way to read new words—without help was sounding out the sound of each word slowly and then repeating the sounds faster and faster until they sounded like something familiar. In those days, parents and anyone who seemed older than me sufficed as a dictionary for the new words I discovered everywhere.
My parents were excited about my ability to read; when they had time we would read stories together. I loved the school’s library, I loved the idea of borrowing books and that I did not need a parent’s permission to do so. At some point, it became a requirement for me to read a certain amount of minutes per night and a parent would have to sign something saying that I did. The requirement was not necessary at first but as the books we were expected to read had less and less pictures and more and more writing it was easy to see why parents needed to get involved. Education was always important to my family and I always knew I had to do well in school. My dad would always say: “You want A’s not B’s, B’s are what people who flip burgers got in school, do you want to flip burgers for the rest of your life?” He would always say it in a way that you’d know you should answer no.
I’d say my literacy developed somewhere between school and the encouragements/threats from my parents, and maybe a little bit of my own curiosities.
No comments:
Post a Comment