Your Literacy Story’s Beginning
If you were lucky, you were read to as a small child. One of the best ways for children to gain literacy is by being read to when they are young. If a child is read to by someone they care about in a safe and welcoming environment, this greatly enhances the child’s chances for gaining literacy. Children who struggle with learning to read often miss out on this important literacy learning experience of having stories read to them.
To gain a richer sense of how your early literacy experiences have shaped your perspective, I want you to try to recall some of your foundational literacy experience. We’ll spend some time freewriting trying to call up these early memories.
First Memories
Freire writers, “In the effort to recapture distant childhood, to understand my act of reading the particular world in which I moved, I re-created, relived the expereinces I lived at a time when I did not yet read words” (p. 31). I want you, like Freire, to try to go back to the absolute earliest literacy memories you have. Maybe you can remember back to before words. Or maybe just try to go back to the earliest memory you have of anything being read to you. Think about when you first saw books. When did you become aware of words and letters? What’s the first reading you can remember doing? Go back as far as you can. Maybe you can go back to an early time in school. Maybe you can go back even farther, to when you were just a child. Write about whatever you can remember.
Important Early Reading
Now write about any early picture books you can recall reading or having read to you.
- Who read to you?
- When and where were you read to?
- Did you go to the library?
- Did you go to any story hours?
- What’s the first book you remember reading on your own?
Important Early Writing
Now let’s explore your early memories of writing:
- What’s the first thing you remember writing?
- Did you do any writing at home?
- Did you ever keep a diary or journal?
- What’s the first school writing you can remember doing?
- What’s the first graded piece of writing you remember?
Anything Else?
Does anything else come to you as you write about these early memories? If so, add that to your story now.