Ellary Wright

UWRT 1103
Ms. Knudson
August 30, 2014
Literacy Memoir
The first memory I have of reading a book was on the couch with my mom at home. My
kindergarten teacher would assign small books each night depending on our reading level at the
time and I would try so hard to speed right through them. The memories go all the way back to
those days in kindergarten. Hearing the sounds and seeing the words as she pointed down each
line in the book made me more and more interested in how she was doing it. I never knew the
journey of learning to read and write properly would still be going on today.
Once I started going to elementary school, reading and writing became something that
was strongly encouraged. It all started with writing your name and learning the alphabet. I can
actually remember learning the alphabet song and wondering how I was ever going to remember
all of those letters and the order they went in. Each letter made a different sound and you had to
say each word so slowly and stretch it out to hear the different sounds in each of them and write
those down. I can remember my teacher telling us in first grade that she wasnt going to help us
spell a single word throughout the whole year because we need to sound them out. Im pretty
sure we all thought she was crazy, but in the end no one really needed her help, and it boosted
our confidence in reading and writing. Reading the Junie B. Jones books was my favorite once I
got into about second grade. I could finally recognize the tougher words that had letters you
couldnt hear in them. Recognizing those letters in the words as I read helped me remember how

to spell them when I started having to write them. Knowing that I had seen that word before and
remembering there was a silent k or somehow an ough when I knew for a fact I couldnt
hear it, felt good. I started reading everything. Road signs, menus, instructions, cereal boxes,
anything I could get my hands on because I felt so smart. I would try to get my older brothers
book from his room and try those out. Even though they made no sense because they were
concepts I hadnt learned yet, I still knew so many of the words in them and I felt like I was three
years older than I was because I could, technically, read his books. Moving down to North
Carolina in fifth grade from Michigan was fun because we played road games like finding
license plates from around the country and stuff like that. Even though it seemed easy at the time
because my reading skills were very good at that point, I now realize that it took speed and
accuracy in recognizing those state names in order to beat my brother. When I think back,
beating my brother actually played a big part in how quickly I learned to read and write. I always
wanted to be able to be better at his spelling words than he was so I could do them with him
when my mom quizzed us on both of ours every week. By the time sixth grade started, I was
reading at an eighth grade level which I thought was pretty cool.
Middle school is where I finally felt challenged again when it came to reading and
especially writing. Grammar became a much bigger part of papers and essays I had to start
writing. I remember having to write my first research paper. It had to be at least three pages long
because I was in the accelerated program and I was terrified. Never had I ever written a research
paper before, let alone a three page one and I was clueless about what to do. Things were now
being graded for not only accurate spelling and completion, but proper grammar and new
vocabulary. Reading up until this point was easy, but now large words and synonyms to words I
was used to were being used and I had to focus and use context clues to figure out what I was

reading sometimes. Thankfully my big brother came in to save the day with his paper from sixth
grade and it gave me a sort of guide to learn from when it came to research papers. I no longer
wanted to beat my brother in his classes because they seemed so much harder than mine.
Thankfully, things got easier throughout middle school with text books and different reading
assignments. One I remember in particular was a book called The Outsiders. I had to read this
during my seventh grade year and I just remember it having an awesome story and message
behind it. It was around that time when I started understanding and catching onto hidden things
and deeper meanings behind a book. By eighth grade the focus was mainly on improving your
writing capabilities. I was even able to memorize an entire paper for English eventually, which I
never thought would be possible. I sat in my room reading it over and over, reciting it in the
mirror and to my parents because for the first time ever, I had to say this entire paper from
memory to a whole classroom of my peers (yes, I was TERRIFIED). The big day came along
and my teacher decided to draw names to see who went when. Well guess what? I had to go first.
I went up there and did really well because I was confident in my abilities thanks to my family
and that always trustworthy mirror in my bedroom back home. Being able to recite that paper
from memory was a big step in my writing and reading career before going into high school.
When freshman year rolled around, everything was revolved around writing longer and
reading more. I was finally used to middle school assignments and now I needed longer research
papers along with citations and MLA format and notecards. On top of it all, we now had summer
reading assignments that involved us reading a certain book over the summer and coming back
to school ready to be tested on it. In all honesty, I thought this was the stupidest thing because
even when I would read the book, I still wouldnt do well on the tests. No one ever knew or
could explain why these summer reading assignments were important, they just told us we

needed them. I had never had to have a formal works cited page and in text citations throughout
a paper in middle school, and now if I didnt it would be considered plagiarism and I would get a
zero?! Yeah, I think high school writing assignments hit everyone a little hard. The books we had
to read would read one way but apparently mean the opposite or something I could never pick up
on. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade, I couldnt have been more lost. Our
teacher made us do 15 sticky notes on every chapter that included questions, comments, and
vocabulary confusions. Believe me when I say, I filled those sticky notes up with all different
things. By the time freshman year ended, I knew what MLA format was and how to cite my
sources so I could stay out of trouble. Each year the papers got longer and the rules got
somewhat stricter but research papers were a routine thing every year at this point. Senior year of
high school had the hardest assignment of them thus far. Our entire English class in twelfth grade
consisted of a major project called the Graduation Project. In this project you had to find a topic
of research and write a 7 page paper on it. Along with the paper, you had to somehow tie the
topic into a physical product you could complete with it. I decided my topic would be Autism. I
wrote all about Autism included the different kinds, symptoms, treatments, prognosis, and the
whole shebang. My product was actually something I did all of my senior year, even though the
project was worked on for only one semester. I went into the local elementary school and
volunteered in a kindergarten classroom that happened to have an Autistic child in it. Writing the
paper was so much easier being able to experience my research in person. Everyone tended to
complain about this project every year but in all reality, I thoroughly enjoyed my time working
on it. It was a large piece of work that prepared you for the big projects you were going to have
in college.