Literacy Narrative Final
Shannon Larmond
Professor Leslie Wolcott
ENC 1102
January 16, 2013
Literacy Narrative
At the beginning of this assignment I though that I didn't have a special story. I thought I didn't have one amazing moment where everything clicked. I didn't believe I had anything that made it hard for me to learn how to read. I grew up in a house where we only spoke English. I did not take gifted classes because I was ahead of my classmates nor was I behind them. I had a middle class family where they got me everything I needed to learn. I thought my story was going to be boring. My teachers just did what they were paid to do. Then I found out that the events in my life made me different. They made my literacy narrative be different from everyone else's. Even if I just had an average with teachers who only did what they were paid to do. They affected my life greatly. They taught me how to read and I never seemed to stop.
I realized that no one ever really stops reading. I mean you are reading this now. When I say I never stopped I mean I always had a book to read for fun. Reading is a huge part of my life. I always read a lot more than my peers. I was constantly at the library getting new books to read. English Composition 2 taught me that the library was my literacy sponsor. A literacy sponsor is an agent, local or distant, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy. (Brandt) The library supported my reading habit. In elementary school we had this reading program. You were suppose to read a book and then answer questions on the computer for points. Certain books were points than others. Obviously a Harry Potter book was worth more points than Winnie the Pooh books. If you collected enough points you become to win prizes. I don't remember the right amount of points for each prize but lets say if you got 100 points you got extra credit in class since most teachers only aimed for kids to get around 40 or so. If you got 200 points your name goes on a list in the lunchroom for everyone to see. If you got to 300 points your name and picture gets put in the lunch room. For 400 points you got to miss class one day to watch a movie of the schools choice. The final prize was at 500 points were you got to have a special lunch with the principal and the other kids who also got 500 points. When I started to take the quizzes online I didn't go out with the mind set to get the prizes. My teacher told us to take quizzes for the books we read and I have read a lot of books. I quickly got to 500 points while my classmates haven't even got to there goal of what was suppose to be 40. This is when I realized that I read more than most kids. I continued to read a lot more because I wanted to see how high I could go. My schools reading program became my literacy sponsor since it enabled me to read more. Then supported my reading by having prizes. Without my sponsors I don't think I would read as much as I did and do today.
While reading was my thing writing was not. I never was the best writer. People in school always assumed that since I read a lot I must also write a lot. That is the farthest from the truth. I was never good at writing. I never used the write grammar or spelled things correctly and my vocabulary wasn't the best. Out of those 3 things my spelling was the worst. I always mixed up different letters like b,d and p. My mom used to get me workbooks to help me read. Those workbooks were my materiality. Materiality are tools that helped me become literate. Reading books and the workbooks were my main materiality. While the workbooks somewhat helped with my spelling it didn't fix it completely. For a while my teacher thought I had a learning disability because of all my spelling errors. I remember getting into a screaming match with my sister in first grade. She called me a monkey for some reason that I don't remember now. I do remember my mother trying to get us to stop fighting. I could tell I only had one shot to get the last word in. So I yelled to my sister that I wasn't a monkey because I didn't live in a t-r-e-e. I made sure to spell out the word for some reason. My mother stopped trying to get us to stop fighting and was telling my how I spelled tree correctly and she was proud. I never realized how bad my spelling was till that exact moment. It made me try learn how to spell things correctly so I can try to spell my way out of things. Though it never did work again. Though my spelling has gotten better my writing has not. I still don't like to write and I have tried writing things that interest me instead of essays. I tried writing creative stories and I learned that I still don't like it. I don't think I ever will.
Writing this literacy narrative made me realize that my story is not average. My stories made me special. Not every child can say they won an argument with their sibling by spelling tree. Or how reading enough books got them to skip class to have a fancy lunch with their principal. While that doesn't sound like the most amazing thing it was to me in the 3rd grade. I grew up liking to reading and hating to write. I am still learning new things about reading and writing all the time and becoming more literate. But I believe it will always be that way for me.