Davis 1 Lindsay Davis Professor Wolcott ENC 1102 22 January 2013 Climbing the Literacy Ladder Reading and

writing are very important skills to be able to have in life. Although depending on where you live and what part of the world you are in the importance of both reading and writing can differ. In America the skill level required for professionalism is growing higher and higher, especially for women. In the early 20th century it wasnt normal for women to get a formal education and to attend college because it was thought that women never needed to be able to read complex writings and write in complex ways. During the era of womens suffrage, it became more acceptable for women to attend college and leave home. In the late 1900s, my mom went to college for a degree in physical therapy and she tried very hard to get there. I think the fact that her mom and dad never went to college and didnt make very much money made her want to achieve something better than what they did. So when I was growing up she always put a big emphasis on education and making sure I knew that could get me very far in life. My mom influenced my literary abilities from the very beginning and she was my biggest literary sponsor, providing me with a bunch of books throughout my childhood, and another large influence on my literacy is my elementary school. She made it seem like it was the most important thing to read and to like reading, and I think thats what has shaped my view on reading and writing today and in the past. In the period of my life long before I could read or write, my mom would always, ever since I remember, read me bedtime stories. At first it was little kid books like Goodnight Moon

Davis 2 and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I loved those books, and I still do to this day. Then after I could grasp stories better, she would read me thicker books with a more complex story. The ones I remember most are the Harry Potter books. I think her reading to me before she taught me how to read was very important, it showed me that reading is interesting and that I could imagine the story in my own head acting out what I was hearing and it then forming into my own little personal movie. She showed me that books can be interesting and that they use my own imagination and I can see it however I want and it can be different from how someone else imagines it but that was okay. From then on I always loved it when she read because Harry Potter captured my attention. Then when my mom wanted me to learn how to read, she stopped reading me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone right in the middle so that I would be encouraged by not just her but, the book also because she wouldnt read to me as much until I would practice reading every day. I remember that I learned how to read very fast and I would read along with my mom in the book while she was reading and see the words when she would say them out loud. Then she introduced me to Hooked on Phonics and thats when I really started to learn how to read and then I learned how to write. Though I already knew how to read at this point I didnt know how to write very well and I remember that I always dreaded it. I was supposed to go to kindergarten in Virginia when I was four, but the year that I was supposed to start, my family moved to Florida where the age cut off for kindergarten was five instead of four, so I had to wait a year to start elementary school. In that year my mom decided she was going to start teaching me how to write early instead of just waiting until I got to kindergarten and for the teachers there to teach me. She had bought a set to teach kids how to read and write called Hooked-on-Phonics, it not only helped me learn how

Davis 3 to read, but it was also the starting block for helping me how to write and actually understand words and what they meant together in sentences. Once I got to kindergarten, I already knew how to read really well and was alright at writing. During kindergarten my teacher had a story time part of the day and I always loved it because one of my favorite things as a kid, besides playing outside, was people reading to me. Throughout kindergarten I got better at writing, although I was already a really good reader. One of the main things I remember about kindergarten was that we started doing this Accelerated Readers program and we started at the very bottom level and were given books in that level and once you read them, you would take a test on them and if you passed you would move up a level after you tested on so many books in that level. I remember gradually moving up from little kiddy books that were like ten pages to thicker books. Since I already knew how to read very well I moved up a lot faster than the other kids and I was the top in my class and I loved being the best. There was this one really smart kid in my class who caught up really fast though and he was a really fast speed-reader (He goes to MIT now). I think the accelerated reader program really helped me work to improve my reading level because without it I dont think I would have had that much motivation to get better. After kindergarten and through out elementary school we had the accelerated reader program and they would give out prizes to the people who read the most books and took the most quizzes on the books. That made me love reading even more. Through my mom as my main literary sponsor and Hooked-on-Phonics and Harry Potter I became a lover of reading. Throughout my whole academic career, except in high school, I got in the habit of reading in my bed before I would go to sleep. I dont know why I stopped I think it was because my high school started at 7 so I had to wake up at 5:30, but somehow I stopped that routine. I used to not

Davis 4 be able to fall asleep until I read some before bed. Im going to get back into that habit, starting with the first book in the Millennium series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and hopefully I will become an avid reader once again.