Teaching Literacy Essay

Submitted By tashua01
Words: 774
Pages: 4

Teaching Literacy Have you ever wondered what it would be like to teach a child how to read and write? I never wondered, but I had the chance so I snatched it. It all started when I was sitting in my room writing letters to my out of state family and my baby cousin noticed what I was doing. She asks, “Tash, what are you doing?” I replied, “I’m writing to Uncle Johnny.” She then states “that looks cool sissy, will you teach me?” My response, “if you want me to, okay.” Shortly after I completed my letter, I ask her “Chas, what exactly do you want to learn?” her reply “to read and write like a big girl like you.” She was four years old at this time, eager to learn new things so I took advantage. We started out simple. The first attempt was to teach her the alphabet. She already knew how to speak the alphabet, she just didn’t know how to write the alphabet. So I grabbed some paper from the drawer beside us and drew the letters Aa on it. I began to show her how the letters are formed and she would try to copy them for herself. It was difficult at first, so in order to help her a bit more I went online and found a website that contained writing practice work sheets. The work sheets contained all letters of the alphabet with dotted lines that actually form the letters. That way, for practice all she had to do was trace the letters. This made it much easier for her, so we continued to do this until she could write the letters herself. Once she was able to do that, we moved on to the sounds each letter makes. After learning the sounds of each individual letter, she learned how to turn the letters into words. In the beginning we used the smallest words, (e.g. it, is, if, on, no, to, cat, dog, etc.) Once she learned how to pronounce the little ones, we moved on to a bit more complex words. Then she was taught how to sound out those words, and eventually her words turned into sentences. Now, she is in the 3rd grade. Chasity is at the top of her class, and she reads and writes at a 6th grade level. These literacy related events are very important to me, because not only did I gain a stronger relationship with my little cousin, it gave me a better idea of the type of care I want. Teaching Chasity the art of literacy helped me develop in many ways. It influenced me to strive more in writing and reading. I used to dread reading and writing all through school and since my teaching her the aspects of literacy, I, myself am more motivated to learn more about it. Because, later on in life she may need assistance with something else to do