The Elementary Years
Elementary school was one of those times that I look back and realize and wish I would have cherished more in regards to my literacy and learning how to read to a whole new level. I think about all the exciting and interesting assignments that I got to do using glue and crayons, and I would do anything to relive my childhood any day. The amount of homework during this period was minimum, and it time was based around doing arts and crafts for your house during Halloween, Christmas (or Hanukkah), Valentine's Day, Easter, etc. With the help of my teachers and parents, I was one of the top kids in my elementary school years, and always found ways to shine in the classroom. I hit a few bumps along the road, but those were minor, mostly consisting of my first failed test in Science during third grade, and my first failed math test in fourth grade, but other then that, my English was at the top of its game at that time.
Kindergarten
I don't know about you, but these people were how I learned how to spell out the alphabet. My Mother was the person to help me on my journey in spelling, and these fine creatures were used in our class to help spell out different words. Each week my teacher Mrs. Jones would grab one of letter people, and hang them up in the room. For that week we would spell out words that started off with that letter, so for instance, Mr. D would be a major focus throughout a week. We would spell out the words dog, daisy, day, doing, do, etc. Each student would have to spell out a letter to make the word the teacher was trying to get us to say, and we would get a reward if we all spelled the words correct. The reward was usually recess so we made sure to always work our hardest to find out how to spell these words.
The only problem I really had with the letter people was that Mr. T was the scariest letter of all, he had HUGE TEETH, and that smile was extremely scary, I understand the whole purpose for T = Teeth, but he gave me hardcore nightmares as a child. But at the end of the day, the letter people helped further my education into reading and writing, and without these lovable (and sometimes scary) creatures, I would not have enjoyed learning the alphabet as much as I did.
The only problem I really had with the letter people was that Mr. T was the scariest letter of all, he had HUGE TEETH, and that smile was extremely scary, I understand the whole purpose for T = Teeth, but he gave me hardcore nightmares as a child. But at the end of the day, the letter people helped further my education into reading and writing, and without these lovable (and sometimes scary) creatures, I would not have enjoyed learning the alphabet as much as I did.
Second Grade
I started to realize that English was my passion during second grade. I remember my teacher split all of us students into different reading groups, and we were assigned to different colored reading books that were based off of our reading level. I originally was in the average reading capability path, but after I told the teacher that I read the entire book, she was puzzled and had me take a quick test that would discuss the book, and the meanings of certain words. After I passed the test with flying colors, I moved onto a different group of a selected couple of students into a more advanced reading level. The group I was placed in was assigned to start trying to read books like the The Boxcar Children series. I found these books extremely entertaining. I do not recall the exact stories that we had to read from them, but I do remember after every book we read, we had to write up a quick three or four sentence summary of what the plot was. I remember struggling at first with the concept of writing more than one sentence, but after a while, this process became second nature and I kept reading these books. This was the grade that I knew I was advanced in my English studies and my literacy was up to par, and this allowed for me to start reading books that I was interested in at my level. The fact that the teacher started making us advanced students write up a few sentences on plot summaries, I started to understand terminology that I would have not understood until a few years later.
Third Grade
Third grade was the start of the dreaded writing style that is cursive. All of us students were told that cursive would be some of the most important formal writing we will ever use because it will be the only form of writing we will be allowed to use the rest of our lives. When I heard my teacher say that, I was nervous because cursive looked extremely hard, and I did not know if I could perform the task and professionally write in cursive. I know that we had a quiz every couple of days that would grade weather we can write in cursive the appropriate way or not. By appropriate I mean does it look like cursive or chicken scratch, and that was a low blow for any of the students who were trying their best to produce the best cursive they could. If a student failed one of the letter quizzes, they had to stay on that letter and work on it even more and retake the quiz until they finally passed it, which was up to our teacher's standards of how cursive should look.
Our teacher was giving out incentives to the people who passed all of the letter quizzes by giving the students an ice cream sundae party. After every couple of letters, a new topping or item would be added to the sundae, allowing for the students to earn more and more as the quizzes progressed. The letter that I got stuck on that almost did not allow for me to get the one topping I was craving, the cherry on top, was the letter Z. The letter Z just would not come out the way I wanted it to, and as much as I tried and tried, my teacher would keep failing me on the quiz. I remember retaking it over and over, until the point of discouragement because I figured that I was not going to get the cherry I was hoping for. Luckily, on one of the last few tries for the test before the ice cream sundae party, I finally passed the test. I believe that my teacher just felt extremely bad for me because I was an emotional child and started to cry every time I failed this quiz. My determination was always there, and by the end of third grade, I had the cursive alphabet down, but I will never forget how awful the letter Z was, and how after that whole year of working extremely hard to write appropriately, I didn't have to use cursive after fifth grade, which was a real bummer.
Our teacher was giving out incentives to the people who passed all of the letter quizzes by giving the students an ice cream sundae party. After every couple of letters, a new topping or item would be added to the sundae, allowing for the students to earn more and more as the quizzes progressed. The letter that I got stuck on that almost did not allow for me to get the one topping I was craving, the cherry on top, was the letter Z. The letter Z just would not come out the way I wanted it to, and as much as I tried and tried, my teacher would keep failing me on the quiz. I remember retaking it over and over, until the point of discouragement because I figured that I was not going to get the cherry I was hoping for. Luckily, on one of the last few tries for the test before the ice cream sundae party, I finally passed the test. I believe that my teacher just felt extremely bad for me because I was an emotional child and started to cry every time I failed this quiz. My determination was always there, and by the end of third grade, I had the cursive alphabet down, but I will never forget how awful the letter Z was, and how after that whole year of working extremely hard to write appropriately, I didn't have to use cursive after fifth grade, which was a real bummer.