READING

According to my mother I was a very nervous child in school. I was deathly afraid of being in trouble and was a perfectionist about all aspects of my work. My teacher confronted my mother about my anxiety in the classroom.  My teacher placed me in the slowest reading group so I would not be as nervous about finishing my work.  At the time I did not know the reason for my placement and was very jealous of the high group readers and wanted to be one of them.   Over the next year I tried very hard to do the best possible work and began reading challenging books to prove to myself that I could do it. The result was that in the middle of my first grade year I was moved to the high reading group. I remember being very proud and excited about my promotion. I began to read often and I began to enjoy school.  This experience challenged me to improve my reading.

Also that year, my favorite book was Dainty Dinosaur.  I would read aloud to my sisters and tried to teach my younger sister to read.  Being that she was very bright, she was able to pick up  a few of the words when she was four and by her first grade year I had taught her to write in cursive, read books and do arithmetic.   I enjoyed reading to my dolls and would give my sisters quizzes on what I had read to them.  Reading books to my younger sisters was a way for me to feel grown up and important and I associated reading to becoming more adult.

Third Grade...... The Dreaded Accelerated Reader My third grade teacher was very strict and I was very afraid of her. She was a difficult teacher that expected a great amount of work of her students. She had excellent control, however and taught us very well.  I remember not liking to take accelerated reader because if you got lower than an 80%, which is two wrong you would be yelled at.  It was about this time that I began not to like being tested on what I had read. As I read the story I would constantly worry that I would forget something they would ask on the test.  I began to feel pressure to read books and do well on my comprehension and that kind of reading was not fun for me. To this day I still do not like taking notes while reading because it takes away from the story. This attitude developed when I was very young.   Fourth Grade.......American Girl Dolls I've never wanted any Christmas present more than Kirsty the American Girl Doll.  I prayed to God every day that I might get one and as I waited in anticipation for Christmas to come I reread all the books I had read about life in early American times. My friends and I acted out the play with the American Girl Theater set and we would take our old dolls and try to dress them up like Kirsty, Samantha, and Molly. I loved the stories about the girls and read all the books in that series.   Christmas came and I was about to open my last present. I still had not seen Kirsty and the box I held in my hand looked to narrow to have a doll in it. As, I opened the box I screamed with delight! It was my very own Kirsty doll with little eye glasses, shoes and her own pair or wool stockings. I remember being so happy that Christmas and it is a memory I'll never forget.