Thomas Newkirk My Family

Imagine a young girl, about three year’s old sitting in her wooden rocking chair surrounded by picture books. They are sprawled all over the floor, and here she sits and “reads” aloud to her stuffed animals. But, she doesn’t know how to read, so she makes the story up based on the pictures she sees in the book. Now imagine the same young girl, now she is five years old. She sits on a chair with crayons of every color, coloring books, and paper spread across the kitchen table. She sits here and draws “humpty dumpty” shaped people and scribbles for hours filling page after page. A few years go by and she is now seven years old and starting the first grade. She is given the chance to write a book and titles it “My Family.” She is so proud of it, …show more content…
I have never been a good writer or speller. I constantly spell the same words wrong over and over again and get the same critique marks on my paper. Unfortunately, I can never seem to fix the problem. I was always a little behind in elementary school, spelling words wrong and making grammar mistakes, but it was never too noticeable until fourth grade because for the most part. I think this is due partly to the argument Thomas Newkirk’s makes when he says, children still link pictures and words together in adolescence, it just starts to become more focused on writing starting in the second grade. I actually very much so enjoyed writing throughout elementary school because I was able to write stories. This style of writing was enjoyable to me because it allowed me to let my creativity soar, and not only did it help my grammar, it also helped my penmanship. This style was also way more exciting than filling out worksheets or practicing spelling words out on a white board. But, in fourth grade, half of our english class was spent learning grammar. I constantly struggled in that class and never could seem to grasp the concepts. This is the same for my papers. I kept getting the same comments throughout high school such as, what is your main idea, and remove the “fluff”. But as much as I would try, over and over again I got the same comments. It’s not that I’m …show more content…
Deborah Brant’s definition of a literary sponsor is, “people, institutions, and circumstances that make it possible for a person to become literate and shape the way the person actually acquires literacy” (43). All of my literary sponsors fit perfectly into that definition. My grandma and parents would have been my reading sponsors, my teachers were my writing sponsors, and the school was overall my literary sponsor. Without these people I would not be the literate person that I am today, nor would I have acquired literacy. Although reading and writing is only something I do in the school setting, I am very grateful to have to ability to read and write because so many people do not have this same