Reading and writing

Learning how to read and write

My early years in school were tough. I did not love going to school because I had to wake up very early in those chilly mornings. I also found class work boring, but the part I loved most about school was my friends and the numerous games we played after the end of classes. Therefore, my relationship with a school in my early childhood years was that of love-hate. I enjoyed most the creative games we played with my friends whom I still remember to this day. My class work performance during those years was pathetic. I mean pathetic because I did not understand anything in class. I was only looking forward to breaks, Physical Exercises (PE) time and after school hours at three p.m.

I feared English lessons because I found it very difficult to comprehend dictations, Grammar, and Spelling. Since English class was my problem, it also meant I trailed among the lowest performing students at the end of term classes. Sometimes I was the last in class. I remember going home with the end of term report for the end of grade 3 with the poorest grades in my class. I was the last student even after repeating the class for another whole year. It was the day my dad beat me up thoroughly with his belt saying I was wasting his money for my education yet I was a good for nothing kid. My mom came to my rescue.

In grade four I was taken to a boarding school. That is the year I started to like school. I started to be serious about my class work and found a lot of support from my teachers who helped me to read and write. I became articulate in my reading of the English language. My teacher Mrs. Philomena White was very encouraging. We spent lots of time after school in her office helping me read words in a novel or textbooks. I can remember how my school performance improved drastically in the mid-term exams as though something that was covering my brain had been removed. Mrs. Philomena also helped me study through the group work reading and discussions that she had formed for our class. I learned a lot from my group members like Rebecca, George, Linda, and Mathew whom I can remember. They were well conversant with the English language. They could read clearly remembering to pause when there is a comma or full stop. Their reading tone also matched that of the author in reading sentences as questions, or stating their exclamations or any other sound and tonal effects that were in the writing. They made reading be an interesting activity. I still consider them my role models for most of them have now become authors of novels and other reading materials in their various fields. Reading time became such a blast moment.

I could comprehend the materials I read even without support from my teachers or peers. Before I went to bed, I had something interesting from the library that helped me to sleep. I started reading other subjects like science, geography, history and sciences more intensely. These were my most favorite subjects. I loved books on these subjects as well as other English story books that had lessons in them. I believe that the storybooks helped me to learn the human virtues such as forgiveness, loyalty, and friendship. In my dormitory, I could read to my friend sleeping next to me and within no time the number of my fellow students surrounding me to listen to my bedtime stories had increased to almost twenty students. It is how we formed our first reading club whereby I helped other students to know how to read.

Learning writing was not as difficult as learning how to read. It is because I could read a paragraph without understanding what it meant or failing to understand the real meaning that the author is trying to communicate. Pronunciation of some words were very difficult such as "scissors’, knife, know, ask, wore, were, and ox. There were also the tongue twisters such as, "she sells seashells by the seashore", and Peter Piper did pick pack full of pickled peppers, or Susie sat by the shoe shine shop. I could not manage to pronounce these words even in slow motion. With writing, I was well familiar with the letters of the alphabet that I had known during my kindergarten years. However, a good writer has to be a reader. During dictations, I had poor scores. It is because I did not know how to spell words. For example in spelling scissors, I wrote seizers. For the word 'journey', I wrote Jani, puppy -Papi.

I managed to overcome my written communication problems when I became a good reader. My teachers in the boarding school I joined like Mrs. White and others managed to identify my mistakes and gave me suggestions on how to improve my literacy. They guided me in making use of grammar knowledge, phonic skills and context in accurately spelling written words. For example, I could not differentiate a ship and sheep even by looking at the context I which they are used. However, through my teacher ‘s support I started knowing that ship is for the sea while sheep is for wool or meat or the sheep is for eating grass. Teachers also helped me through their follow-up learning activities that helped me to consolidate the whole learning process. Through contextualizing of dictations, I managed to understand how a language is a communicative tool, and this helped me to progress in my learning targets.

Activity time in my kindergarten was full of fun. We worked with colorful alphabets and crafts. Each student in our kindergarten class had a memory box. Mine was blue with yellow flowers. I loved alphabets during the activity time. It was fun, and I could learn something new. I enjoyed the class because it was a hands-on activity that included coloring the letters of the alphabet and placing what it stands for on its side. For example, I could color letter a red and then place an Apple Next to it. For letter B, I colored it yellow and placed a banana next to it.

The same applies to letter Y and tying a yarn on that letter. I enjoyed those classes because we always had an activity to do every day. The class arrangement was in small groups of 4 to 5 students. In these groups, we could discuss our favorite city, town or food type that starts with a certain letter like M. There was another day that the kindergarten teacher came with plenty engraved beads. Each of them had the letters of the alphabet. The beads were colorful with all the colors of the rainbow. She told us to join the beads with a string with each bead having the letters of our names. The beads were so colorful that one of the students swallowed one maybe imagining it to be a sweet. That was the end of beadwork in class because the teacher got terrified. However, I love work to this very day, and I hope to share with my kids someday. It is interesting ways of making kids learn the spelling of their names or their pet’s names.

By the end of the 4 grade, I was among the top students in my class. My best subjects were history, English, science, social studies, and language arts. My parents could not believe my results. My dad was so pleased that he bought me a yellow bicycle that I loved. I forgave him for the beating he gave me the previous year. Since then reading and writing have been part of me. I read and write on a daily basis. I no longer fear exams or reading comprehension tests.

My learning on how to read and write did not stop during the school holidays. I spent lots of time playing scrabble at home with my family members and friends. The game was a real educational tool because it helped me improve my vocabulary, and it helped in breeding a healthy competition. The Scrabble game helped me start liking spelling and spelling tests. I came up with spelling lists and corrected the words that I misspelled. I always consider the scrabble game to be for smart people like me, and it is one of the best learning tools for classrooms. It is a game that I still play to this very day because it has enabled me to have a sports activity alongside basketball. Scrabble also helps to encourage conversations. When I started playing, Scrabble I did not know it was an educational activity because it has no tension in the air. I still find them to be a great distraction of killing the long hours during school holidays. I also play with my closest friends on weekends, and we have an obsession with it.

Therefore, I can say my reading and writing knowledge did not come easy. While some of my classmates by the second grade had mastered the skills of writing, and they could comprehend any written material, mine was not the same. Many things have shaped my skills in writing and reading especially the support I got from my 4th-grade teacher Mrs. White. I appreciate her effort in taking the time to understand my reading challenges and helped me understand the meaning of a written work. I can also say that my adventure spirit mainly drove my kindergarten and early elementary school years, and I was more interested in hands-on activities with fun. I loved writing because of the fun activities, but I was still poor in spelling. Through the teachers support, I have managed to be a good reader and writer. I can now effectively communicate in written English through the support of my teachers. Reading and writing are therefore the skills that have made me be a successful person I am today.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in graduate paper writing service if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper writing service.

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