Category: Literacy Narrative

At this point in my life I find myself in an interesting predicament regarding my attitudes toward reading and writing. For anything that I wanna become In life reading is a major part of it. Everything involves reading. I just want to thank my past teachers and parents cause without them I think I would have the passion to read or write anything. When talking about reading and writing, I think about elementary school to now. Throughout my years in school I was lucky to meet teachers who had live to read and help me with this subject. Reading and writing wasn’t really my favorite subject. I wasn’t bad at it, I just didn’t like to read. My parents and my pass teachers helped me progress. They helped me understand passages even though they would be boring at times. My mom or dad would have me pick from a news paper if it was from the sports section or cartoons and have me summarize it. They would also choose 10 words from the dictionary and have me write each word 5 time each, know how to spell them, define it , and know how to use it in a sentence. So as I said, I didn’t like to read often. If I even see a big paragraph I would just skim through it. I wouldn’t read it clearly.

My middle school teacher ms Craig also had a big impact on me. She would have a way for me to read boring texts. She also thought me to express myself in my writings. If we were writing on a topic in class she told us to brain storm and jot down notes that relates to the topic for 10 to 15 minutes. After she would tell us to write introduction, body number 1, body number 2, counter claim and conclusion on our papers. From there we would use the ideas we brain storm about the topic and put it in those categories to organize our thoughts. This strategy actually had helped me become a better writer because not it helped me become a better and improved writer.

Before I learned this strategy I had a bad experience. One of my experience was when I had to write an essay and present on a topic based on martin Luther king. So back then I would just write non stop and not even look back to see what I was writing. So when I was writing on Martin Luther king jr, I was just trying to finish fast. So my time had came up in my class to present. As I was reading I had notice that I wrote all over the place. It wasn’t organized right. I had written some topics on Martin Luther king over and over. I was basically repeating myself . So I was embarrassed. So at the end of my presentation out of 1-4 I had gotten a 2.5 which kind of bad. I did t get that high grade because of me not organizing my writing.

A literacy narrative is a popular way for writers to talk about their relationship with reading, speaking, and writing. It is basically free writing that makes your brain get loose. You are supposed to write non stop until you can’t write no more on a topic. From there you organize your writing from what you have wrote . I can honestly say that if anybody is writing about any topic they should recommend this strategy. It is helpful in my opinion. It helps you develop your reading/writing skills for your upcoming future

When I was younger I felt real low about myself in school. I never really thought of myself as a reader or writer. The teacher would try to facilitate discussions and I just couldn’t comprehend what the other kids were saying. Throughout middle school and most of high school I hated reading and I hated writing. Why is that? We had to read certain books that was a part of the “curriculum” the school had, everyone knows that. It was like I had to read a book and understand all the metaphors and the ideas of what the author wanted us to know. Listening to all the kids talking and going into depth of a book that meant nothing to me was kind of the start of me hating to read or write. 

   After that came essays we all had to write every single time and there was always a specific thing we had to write about and find details to support it and if you wrote something wrong you got a bad grade, obviously. There was always instructions to write essays and maybe that was the reason why I hated it so much, the writing part. Not only that but it was like my writing was so terrible, every time I got my paper back, there was so many grammar mistakes I didn’t see. Also getting a lot of comments back from my teachers about how my sentences didn’t make sense through some and most of my middle and high school. 

     During my Junior year, I had an english teacher that was so passionate about teaching students how to write well,  she really wanted us to get used to writing well for college. Writing essays was different with her, she always gave us options in what we, the class, wanted and what we were comfortable with. 

       Yea that’s definitely when my perspective on writing changed. Also, my writing itself got better, I no longer had a ton of comments from my teachers what was wrong about my writing and it felt good. It was like taking baby steps and I didn’t realize how my writing got better throughout the year. This class helped me to continue writing my essays better. 

      During Senior year, I took classes that were college level to prepare myself for actual college. Surprising I had like a writing awakening sort of thing which actually came from my science college course. We were watching a movie about the Soviet Union and it’s time around there and the assignment was to write a three page essay on the movie. It was that kind of writing like a movie critic. I honestly don’t think I had ever worked so hard on an essay before, I guess because it was a college class I had to up my game. At first I was so anxious about how the paper would trim out, I saw that movie three times before I actually started writing and just going back to specific scenes here and there. Of course there was a prompt but it was really vague, just comparing that time period to this time period. I worked on it a couple of days until about one in the morning just writing and rewriting and fixing grammar and all that. After watching it so many times I thought that maybe I overdid it, but in my head Iknew this was going to be worth it. While writing it, I felt so proud of myself that I was able to accomplish a big assignment like that. 

    When I got that paper back, right on top was a one hundred and a small smile. I looked through the pages and had no comments and when I saw the rubric all it said was “perfect paper”. This moment felt like the greatest achievement I had ever done in my educational years and yet all it was just one assignment.

     Not only did he write that on my paper, my teacher had said “ there was only one paper that got a one hundred, I didn’t have to write anything, it was perfectly written, the best paper I have ever read in my whole life of teaching”. In my head I finally got the feedback from the teacher I wanted for my writing. 

      He said “Nataly you did an amazing job”. 

 

Due Sept 18: Please post your revised literacy narratives.  Think of a title that encapsulates your piece!

Click on the “Literacy Narrative” category option when posting.

Peruse your classmates’s stories about how they became the readers and writers and thinkers they are today. What can we learn about the role of reading and writing today as a result of these shared pieces?