Brendan O’Neal

Literacy Narrative

When I was a very young child, I really enjoyed my Pre-K class at Glendale Elementary

(Glen Burnie, MD), the skills I learned there, and the complementary activities my parents did

with me. The best part about it was the instructor’s enthusiasm when working with me and other

children! Back then, learning never felt like work--it felt like a game. The following is one of my

cherished memories:

I had just started Pre-K. I was a little nervous, but mostly excited to meet new people my

age, make friends, and learn. When I got to school, I immediately felt welcomed. The teachers

were all very sweet, but my teacher Ms. Smith was the best. Days in the class were mostly

easy, but at some point we would usually play a challenging word game. Ms. Smith would hold

up a poster with pictures of animals first. She would point to one of the many animals on it, and

we would make a racket of imitation growls and meows. It was a blast. Then it would get harder.

She got a poster with the words of animals on it. When she pointed to “cow”, it was a race to be

the first to moo. It was difficult but I loved it. Ms. Smith would usually end the day by reading a

children’s book and interacting with us, pointing to a word and waiting for someone to yell it out.

When the bell rang we would all line up to follow Ms. Smith out to the front of the school,

where then I would excitedly sprint over to my smiling father who stood waiting by the grey car.

We would then go home and play, and at night my parents and I would read together, teaching

me to sound out simple words.

Of course, many of the fine details of the story are not quite factual--my teacher was

most likely not “Ms. Smith” and I don’t recall if there were cows on the posters. Regardless,

these beginning stages of my school experience were integral to not only my learning of, but my

disposition towards literacy. “Ms. Smith” incorporated at least three learning styles in her lesson:

Verbal (speaking the words/noises), Visual (seeing the words/pictures), and Auditory (hearing

others make the sounds). I have always been an auditory learner, so even though I was not the
first to answer, hearing others was effective. When “Ms. Smith” read the story, we applied the

skills we practiced during the previous activity to improve our decoding skills. When we saw an

animal in the story that we were familiar with, we improved our sight identification. The

frequency of these words popping up throughout the lesson solidified our understanding of their

meanings and pronunciation. Putting the words in context improved our cueing systems,

allowing us to learn that tigers lived in jungles and bears in woods. If a child said a tiger

“meows”, we concluded that the child’s response didn’t sound right. “Ms. Smith” then explained

that the tiger’s authentic sound was the second part of its name: “ger” or “grrr”. This broke down

“tiger” into phonemes--“G” and “Er”, introducing to us that in words are individual sounds that

can be spelled and sounded out. When I went home to read with my parents, I expanded my

phonemic awareness as they helped me sound out and pronounce unfamiliar words. We even

ventured into phonological awareness when I put my little finger on the first phoneme of a word I

saw in the book, sounded it out, moved my finger to the next, sounded it out, and concluded

with a combining of the phonemes and a final pronunciation. My parents heavily guided me in

this, but it introduced me to the idea that I would be able to one day read a whole book on my

own simply by knowing the phonemes and their corresponding visual representations (letters).

Along with the effective differentiated instruction, the enthusiasm of my teachers and parents

instilled in me a curiosity and passion in literacy that I still hold to this day.