Reflection About Reading

As a child, I read non-stop. I used to spend entire nights reading, so much so that by the age of 9, I had developed grey circles under my eyes, which I wore like a badge. In school, I would use every free second I had to get just a little closer to finishing whatever book I had on hand. Ms. Carpenter, who always seemed as though she didn’t like teaching very much, frequently yelled at me for keeping my books on my desk so I could get to them quicker whenever I finished my classwork. She insisted that they were a distraction. But I always had a book to read, because every Friday each class walked in a neat line

Before I began elementary school, I enjoyed reading picture books, the touch and feel books and pop-up books. I loved the author Dr. Suess, because he was funny and because I loved the rhyming he did in his writing. I can remember before bed, my mom or dad would read to me until I got old enough to read myself. My mom has always enjoyed reading, if she is not reading a book, then she is reading a recipe or a magazine. My dad on the other hand, I have only seen him read one book, besides reading manuals for his tools. Reading was not a big deal in my house, all of us kids were told that we needed to read, but they did not force us to read. This brings me to Richard Rodriguez’s essay, in his household reading was not as important, but once he got to school, he realized that reading is one of the main activities. I can relate to Rodriguez because in either one of our households we weren’t told that we had to read before we did something else. Once I got to elementary school is when I realized that reading was not for me. Before school, I enjoyed reading, then once I began elementary school, I was forced to read, take tests over books, and read out loud in front of the class which made reading a chore.

Only bound to the category of fiction, herds of twelve and thirteen year olds stampeded through the aisles to find the simplest books. The eight foot book shelves and mile wide aisles of the library seemed towering to a prepubescent seventh grader. The sheer amount of choices staggered a middle schooler when compared to the abysmal elementary school selection. Seventh grade level reading prevailed as the new standard, as it clearly reflected in the book options. The idea of falling back to any of my go-to book report choices from elementary school swiftly tapered away. Not knowing what to pick, I made my decision based purely off of the cover, and wandered haphazardly to the overly eager librarians for check out, gazing over the thousands of books as I passed, wondering what if. As mandatory, the librarians flapped their tongues about my amazing decision and congratulated me on getting my “first book of many” for the year. Little did they know, I dreaded having to read. However, I did not know of the amazing story that awaited

I spent my childhood consumed by books. I kept one in my bag and took every spare moment that I could to read, even if it was only a page. My parents made my teacher’s promise that I wouldn’t read during recess. In the mornings when they woke me up for school, they found me sleeping, still clutching my book from the night before, unable to put it down in spite of the tug of sleep.

Ripp points out in this article is the importance of keeping the students interested and engaged in books. For any number of reasons, such as trying to fit in or juggling priorities in general, students often completely give up on reading for enjoyment, and, as Mrs. Ripp mentions, “There is no year that we cannot lose a reader.” In essence, the point she is trying to get across is that students of any age are prone to developing a negative attitude or outlook towards reading. For some students, this might come as a result of being a struggling reader, while for others it may be as simple as not knowing how or what to read for pleasure. Where these issues are concerned, Mrs. Ripp has taken it upon herself to instill a new – or renewed – love and passion for diving into a good

Moving into middle school, I expected to continue to love reading, and that was true at some points during this time. However, it was also marked with times where I loathed reading, it had become a chore. I still loved reading fiction, and my winter break in eighth grade included long readings from The Mysterious Benedict Society series; but I would struggle in attempts to really enjoy what literacy was meant to be. Reading was no longer

I chose the article “Disliking Books at an Early Age” by Gerald Graff. He is a teacher of literature and states his advantage as a teacher since he hated and feared books while growing up. Graff discovered something that provided reading to be more appealing. He engaged himself into the text where reading became fun. Growing up Graff was raised in an ethnically mixed Chicago neighborhood where he feared that if he had anything to do with books, he would get beaten up. Graff, however, would sit down and try to read novels, but he could not relate to any of the text, he would just stare blankly at the pages. Later Graff’s fear developed into flunking college. Graff then discovered a new way of reading finding a way to make reading fun. Graff put himself into the text, a sense of personal engagement.  The main point in Graff’s article is to read at an angle and keep an open mind while being patient.

The lack of interest in reading is due to many things, but tends to begin with young children. Schools and parents do not encourage their children to read for fun (Charleston). Parents do so because they were not taught to enjoy reading, or they do not have time. Schools, on the other hand, create an environment where reading becomes more of a chore than a fun activity (Denby). Schools do try to teach kids to enjoy reading, teachers will set times or page numbers for their students to read. A study on this method has shown that when told to only read a set amount of time or pages, children will only read the amount required by the teachers. The things that children read are normally not something they chose. This decision creates a hatred for reading in children, even if they loved to read before. “In many case, such as assignments make the students hate the book they have just read, no matter how

Growing up it became apparent to me rather quickly that reading was not an option. Whether or not I particularly enjoyed it, I was going to have to do it – for the rest of my life. It was not until half way through high school that I began to value reading and writing. Before, I saw reading and writing as more of a chore, or something that I had to do. Though now, it is something that I have more of an appreciation for. Reading and writing have become an outlet for creativity, expression, stress, and much more.

In grade school, I was never the one who was passionate about reading. However, when it came time to write a story, I was excited and even wrote stories on my own. In third grade, my friends and I would write fictional stories during lunchtime and present them to our teacher after recess. I can still remember the sense of pride we felt when we saw the surprised and proud looks on our teacher’s face. It made us want to write more and more. But years went on, and I still never formed a fondness for recreational reading. I’ve been assigned more than five books a year in the past; some would catch my interest, but never enough to pull me in as much as to read in my spare time. There were rare occasions when I was really pulled into a book that was assigned to me. To this day I do not know if that was because of the mere thought that I was not willingly reading the book, or just that I did not have the patience for it. All

I love to read, but it didn't start out that way. When I was in first grade and we are just starting to learn how to read books, I remember being mad because I wasn't in the advanced reading group. The advanced reading group got a different book than everyone in the normal reading level and got to work in a different section of the room. This made me so mad that I decided I didn't want to try which, when I look back on it now was not the smartest thing I could've done. I knew how to read but it never really appealed to me, especially since I wasn't the most proficient reader. And why would I want to read a book when I could play with a Bratz doll?

I never really had a chance to connect with books and reading on a very personal level as a child. They always seemed impractical to me: mainly fiction books. Don’t get me wrong or anything. I kind of got the idea of why students were made to read fiction books in school: to help increase empathy, vocabulary, and imagination, but I never really got into it. My family never enforced reading for me as strictly as other kids parents did for them, but emphasized the concrete skills. This inevitably led me to be mainly interested in the hard skills verse the more abstract soft skills. Out of this reasoning, I decided not to read books of the type throughout elementary, middle, and high school. I didn’t hate them or anything. I just didn’t have them in my tunnel vision.

Writing has always been something I dread. It’s weird because I love talking and telling stories, but the moment I have to write it all down on paper, I become frantic. It’s almost as if a horse race just begun in my mind, with hundreds of horses, or words, running through my mind, unable to place them in chronological order. Because I struggle to form satisfying sentence structure, it takes me hours, sometimes even days, to write one paper. It’s not that I think I’m a “bad writer,” I just get discouraged easily. Needless to say, I don’t think highly of my writing skills. When I was little I loved to both read and write. I read just about any book I could get my hands on, and my journal was my go to for my daily adventures. Although it’s

Growing up I was never the best writer or reader. Every time I read a certain book for school, I tend to just read past the lines and not know what I just read. Some material would be interesting but never caught my attention to the point that attracted my interests. Writing was extremely difficult since it takes a lot of patience and exact wording that I need to use to make my essay come out clean. Plenty of ideas would come up when I am writing my paper, however I just don’t know how to get it all down on the piece of paper. My mind would go off tangent to think about the ideas that I wrote before on the paper and then I will try to include those ideas into my paper. This causes a negative flow throughout my essay and results of the

During the month of May, 2017, my Language Arts class was assigned a book project. Everyone had a book and a worksheet that went along with the book, which helped us understand the meanings and ideas in the book. This year we were reading The Great Gatsby. The teacher would normally read the