When I think of the word literacy, the first thing that comes to mind is vocabulary. I think of literacy as the amount of vocabulary an individual has in their mind. You need a wide variety of vocabulary in order to be sufficiently successful at reading and writing. The dictionary may say that the definition is the ability to read and/or write, but without vocabulary both of those are nearly impossible to do because vocabulary is the foundation for all reading and writing. When I look back on my life and try to think of things that helped shape me to become the reader/writer I am today, I can find many things. One specific time in my life that started my ability to read was when I was in kindergarten and was trying to learn how to read.
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One of the most memorable ones for me was the story The Lightning Thief. At the time we were learning all about Greek mythology and all the gods that went along with that. The Lightning Thief was a really interesting story that was more appealing for kids our age at the time. The whole concept of the main character who was claimed to be what they call a demi-god, which was someone that had a parent that was one of the gods and another parent that was just normal. Then he would go on to try and prove himself worthy to his father Zeus by finding his father’s missing lightning bolt. I thought this story was pretty interesting and I really enjoyed it a lot. After we got to read it, we ended up going on a field trip to watch the movie. I really enjoyed this because after reading the story and then watching it, you got to see that mental image you had been picturing throughout the story live on a screen. The vocabulary that I obtained from this story was important in my life because after reading the book and trying to figure out what certain words meant, I was able to assure myself that what I thought a word meant, was an accurate example of the word when I watched the movie after the book. I feel like this was a stepping stone in reading/writing development because I was able to read and comprehend a more complex text compared to previous books and at the same time be …show more content…
This was another book that had to do with Greek gods and goddesses but had a different storyline to it. For me, the book was long and pretty hard to understand. I would read chapters over and over again and still not be able to put a mental picture inside my head of what was actually going on. The vocabulary in this story was very complex for me and made it hard to understand. The only reason I was able to learn what words meant and increase my vocabulary was because of pictures. My English teacher would draw pictures on the whiteboard every day explaining what was going on. It was kind of like a map in the sense that she would draw a creature or some location in the story line on the board and that was essentially what that chapter revolved around. Then each day as we would progress through the story, she would add to the road map and you could slowly start to piece together what was actually going on and in what order. I’m the kind of person who is a visual learner, so seeing these pictures every day when I would walk into class really helped me refresh my mind on what had previously happened in the story. I feel like this was an important learning tool for me as a reader. I realized that for me personally, it was much easier to understand what was
One of the most memorable ones for me was the story The Lightning Thief. At the time we were learning all about Greek mythology and all the gods that went along with that. The Lightning Thief was a really interesting story that was more appealing for kids our age at the time. The whole concept of the main character who was claimed to be what they call a demi-god, which was someone that had a parent that was one of the gods and another parent that was just normal. Then he would go on to try and prove himself worthy to his father Zeus by finding his father’s missing lightning bolt. I thought this story was pretty interesting and I really enjoyed it a lot. After we got to read it, we ended up going on a field trip to watch the movie. I really enjoyed this because after reading the story and then watching it, you got to see that mental image you had been picturing throughout the story live on a screen. The vocabulary that I obtained from this story was important in my life because after reading the book and trying to figure out what certain words meant, I was able to assure myself that what I thought a word meant, was an accurate example of the word when I watched the movie after the book. I feel like this was a stepping stone in reading/writing development because I was able to read and comprehend a more complex text compared to previous books and at the same time be …show more content…
This was another book that had to do with Greek gods and goddesses but had a different storyline to it. For me, the book was long and pretty hard to understand. I would read chapters over and over again and still not be able to put a mental picture inside my head of what was actually going on. The vocabulary in this story was very complex for me and made it hard to understand. The only reason I was able to learn what words meant and increase my vocabulary was because of pictures. My English teacher would draw pictures on the whiteboard every day explaining what was going on. It was kind of like a map in the sense that she would draw a creature or some location in the story line on the board and that was essentially what that chapter revolved around. Then each day as we would progress through the story, she would add to the road map and you could slowly start to piece together what was actually going on and in what order. I’m the kind of person who is a visual learner, so seeing these pictures every day when I would walk into class really helped me refresh my mind on what had previously happened in the story. I feel like this was an important learning tool for me as a reader. I realized that for me personally, it was much easier to understand what was