Personal Narrative: The Dynamic Indicator Of Basic Early Literacy Skills

For the first six years of my life, I had almost never read; not to my parents or even to myself. It wasn’t that I was unable to—I had to learned to read at a young age, and I did so fairly well—but the act of sitting for hours and flipping page after page after page. It seemed so monotonous. Then I entered first grade, where reading was mandatory. Within the first week of the school year, each student was given a small booklet of passages. Every day someone was called to the teacher’s desk to read. When I heard my name being called for the first time, I had an internal panic attack. I was a petite little first grader, and I had the timid personality to match my small frame. As I slowly walked over to my teacher, I could feel my face getting red. …show more content…
Budd, must have noticed how nervous I was, and told me in her kind voice that I had nothing to be worried about. She explained to me how the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) worked. I would read a paragraph or so aloud to her, while she marked any mispronunciations or any words I struggled with. Even after being told exactly what I would be doing, I was still a little uneasy.
I began to read the passage, and my voice was so uneven and shaky. I laughed to myself, and then continued reading. My sentences were a little less choppy the second time around, and I started to gain a little confidence. I made a couple of mistakes, but I kept on reading anyways. In order to test my comprehension, Mrs. Budd would ask me a three questions about the paragraph(s) after reading them. I ended up not doing very well on those either. Before I went back to my seat, Mrs. Budd stopped me and spoke to me about my poor performance, encouraging me to start reading outside of