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Bilingual Dictionary
My parents used to have a dictionary that would have a word in english, followed by the same word in Spanish. I do not have any pictures of me holding a book, but i do have a picture of my mom holding a dictionary next to me. My mom said she would attempt to read random words to me, although it was hard, she made the effort to understand these words. -
Computer
I was about 5 years old in this picture and the computer in the back was the first computer we ever owned. I remember logging on to that computer and having no internet, but the computer came with these games already on it. Later on my parents bought me educational games and we finally got internet. -
Super Mario 64 & The Nintendo 64
I grew up playing video games, if you remember playing games on the Nintendo 64 or other older systems you'd remember having to read everything on the screen because the characters in the game would not say a word like they do now. I remember trying to read every dialect in Super Mario 64 when I was 5, but I would get bored and skip through all of it. -
Writing
When I was six I used to go around the house copying words that I would see on labels, tv, and books so I could copy them over and over again to learn how to spell the word. -
Pronunciation
While learning how to read I could not pronounce certain words right. Not because I didn't know how to read, but because of still learning how to speak the language. While in first grade there was a teacher named Mrs. Schiming that would come and take me out of class every Tuesday and Thursday to help me with my pronunciation. Till this day, I still cant pronounce certain words with the letter "g" in them. -
"Danny Books"
I learned how to read from reading these "Danny The Dog" books, my first grade teacher had bins of these short stories of a dog named Danny, ironically.. -
Super Penguin
When I was in second grade I wrote a chapter book about a penguin with super powers. At the time this made writing really exciting for me because I realized I could use my imagination while writing stories. -
ELL Testing
Every year the kids who speak english as a second language are tested on reading, writing, and speaking. I had to take this test from 1st grade till the 7th grade when I tested out of the annual ELL test. -
Diary of A Wimpy Kid
The Diary of A Wimpy Kid was the only book series I ever followed. I Had the first four books because at the time they were so funny to me. Everyone at one point in their lives can admit they'd laugh at a band called "The Loaded Diapers." These books made reading fun for me. -
Roberto Clemente
Throughout elementary school and middle school I really wanted to grow up to be a professional baseball player, so I would read all sorts of books about baseball. During the fifth grade my favorite book that I had read was about Roberto Clemente, a baseball player that used to play for the the Pittsburgh Pirates, I reread it several times and still have the book today. -
Metaphors and similes in Rap Music.
When I first started paying attention to rap music I started to pay a lot of attention to the metaphors and similes rappers would use. Lil Wayne is a rapper who uses a lot of metaphors in his music. Here is a song of his that is full of metaphors, analogies and similes Link text Through middle school whenever we would have a writing assignment for Language Arts I would try to use metaphors that fit. Rap music has had influence on my writing. -
My Early Facebook Statues
My earliest experiences on Facebook consist of constantly posting pointless statuses about whatever it was I had just done or was about to do. Now at 19 years old I would have unfriended my 12 year old self. -
Like My Status For A Truth Is
When I was 13 I would post "like my status for a truth is," every other month. If a person would like the status they'd get a truth is on their wall. These truth is would say what you thought about the person. I'd say this was a pretty good way to get girls back then. -
How I Learned The Difference Between There, Their, and They're.
I used to struggle with understanding how to use there, their, and they're. I also used to struggle with you're and your, I eventually learned, but not because of school. My ex-girlfriend used to be a grammar Nazi, she would get annoyed and correct me when I would use the wrong "there." Once I began to understand the difference between all of them I would use the wrong 'there" on purpose. -
Univision
Throughout middle school and high school I did not take a single language class because the teachers believed I still needed to be apart of the ELL program. I would have loved to take Spanish to have the chance to learn how to properly read and write the language better than I do now. So to try to improve all that I decided to download Spanish news apps to my phone to sort of broaden my vocabulary and practice my reading. -
Three Kings Play
From when I was an 8th grader till I was a junior in high school every January we'd act out the three kings play at church in front of a bilingual audience. We would do half the play in Spanish and the other half in English , we didn't need to memorize our lines so we just read it off the sheet. -
On & On
During my junior year at Whitewater High School I wrote a paper for english class were I broke down the lyrics of a song called On & On by Joey Bada$$. This paper was probably the best paper that I wrote in high school, to me it was one of my favorites because I had fun writing it and it was about a rap song. -
ACT Reading
Taking the ACT was brutal. I remember having to take the math portion first thing in the morning and then the second part of the morning I had to take the science portion of the ACT. I do not know how I survived the science portion because it required a lot of reading and when you are tired, reading scientific terms isn't the ideal thing to do. -
When I Started Paying Attention To The Newspaper.
From my sophomore through senior soccer seasons, I started paying more attention to the newspaper because I realized we would sometimes have articles about our last game and it was pretty cool to see your name in a newspaper. This is part of a stat sheet from the Janesville Gazette of our win vs. Evansville. -
Reading To Kids.
This is probably the most memorable experience with reading from recent times that I have had. I met this little kid named Kyle at a daycare in Eagle Butte, South Dakota on a mission trip I went to last summer. We would read through half of a book and then Kyle would get up and bring over another book. We probably got half way through most of the Arthur books.
