Year Three

reading and writing haves always seemed like a chore to me, and it doesn’t seem like my view on that is going to change anytime soon. First, starting before it all started, was preschool. There I learned the very basics, as would be expected from a 4-year-old kid just learning how to handle the demands of school; although, it wasn’t very demanding back then. With it being preschool, there really wasn’t too much reading, and there wasn’t any writing. However, moving along into the early stages…

normally associated with a basal reading program” (75–76). Initially SSR termed for a school-wide daily reading time for students in which reading material was not monitored nor were students evaluated on their reading. SSR first was proposed over forty years ago by Lyman C. Hunt, Jr. of the University of Vermont in the 1960s (Trelease 2001). Manning-Dowd (1985) reviewed research on SSR and concluded that SSR has a positive effect on reading comprehension and reading attitudes at all grade…

In Laos traditionally three shots are fired into the air to frighten away evil spirits. This in not often done in the U.S. because of laws prohibiting it heavily populated areas as well as general gun laws in any area. "The body is washed and dressed in new clothes. Mourners…

History has always been a big part of my life. I remember in first grade pouring all of my affections onto the historical fiction American girl doll books in the elementary school library and imagining myself as a Swedish immigrant in 1854, or as a young patriot in 1774. During second and third grade I devoted my free time to reading about the Civil War and the Spanish explorers that conquested through my native Florida. In fourth grade I remember leaping through a native american pottery…

The teacher expected us to do projects reflecting over what we had read every time we finished a book, with a minimum of five per trimester. I hated doing these reflection projects, so my quantity of reading fell further to just five books every three months. However, the final nail in the coffin of my reading came in eighth grade. On the first day of school, the teacher informed us that the only genre we would be allowed to read for out reading logs, which were unnecessarily complicated, was…

was in Mrs. Houston and Mrs. Hall’s class. I entered school on the first day, walked through the double doors of the school and felt like I was alone. I approached my cluster of classroom cubes. I walked past the little toy kitchen in the lobby. Saw three different classrooms but remembered earlier that week when I went with my mom there that it was on the furthest right with the dog posters. I walk into my class and I see my cousin Ty and we say hi to each other. Soon after we went to…

Areté, the process of becoming man, is the major theme of the two Hemingway novels, The Old Man and the Sea and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. The class discussions which analyzed the theme of the novels gave me a strong reminder of my own such experience. I am a cellist and playing the instrument is definitely the most enjoyable, yet very serious and important part of my life. However, it has not always been this influential; until my areté was sparked by major events which…

My education started when I was just three years old, sitting between my parents on their bed, reading - or at least trying to - the HOP (Hooked On Phonics) books. It was our nightly routine all through Pre-K. By the time that I was in Kindergarten we had worked our way up to the Magic Tree House stories, Junie B. Jones, and The Chronicles of Narnia books, and so many more. My parents made sure that they started to teach me skills that I would need for school at a young age. From reading books…

sixth grade, I wanted to be an architect. By ninth grade, nothing interested me anymore. My grandfather became gravely ill and hospitalized when I was in ninth grade. Visiting my grandfather was the first time I had entered a hospital since I was six years old and my father took me to meet my new baby sister. The hospital was an imposing building and yet I felt energized, not intimidated, by the setting. I witnessed my grandfather’s nurse interacting with him and the connection she had created…

that part of dinner. But for the rest of my life, past the age of five, I couldn’t even answer the question with that sarcastic response, because my whole family wouldn’t be there together again. I now, at 22, long for that nightly moment. I was 5 years old and home from morning Kindergarten. I was playing…