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Bedtime Stories
Starting at birth, either my mom or dad would read a story before bedtime. I have 4 siblings so this was a nightly event that every child was likely to attend. We would take turns picking out books to read from the vast collection we had that took up several shelves. My favorite was The Rainbow Fish. I think this was mainly because the fish in the book had sparkly fins. -
Reading the Comics
During the holidays my family would always go visit my grandparents. One of the daily traditions was that my grandpa would read the comics from the day's paper to all the grandkids. This didn't just happen with the Sunday comics! What made it so fun was that it was a daily event. He would narrrate and have each character have a different voice. My favorite was always Garfield or Peanuts, but his was Family Circus. -
Reading in the Teepee
For part of elementary school I went to school in Texas.The library at my elemetary school had all of these fun areas you could read other than the mats on the floor. There was a huge pioneer wooden wagon, four wooden horses that had saddles, and a big teepee at the very center of the library. There were several designated times a week when my class would come to the library to read in an area that we individually chose. -
Books on Tape
My family would go on driving vacations throughout most of my childhood rather than taking planes. Since all the kids in my family are such varying ages, something that my parents found to work well in keeping us occupied was listening to books on tape in the car during the trip. This act exposed me to a wide range of literature at a young age, as I often wasn't the one picking out what book we listened to. -
The Game of Clue
I was involved in an advanced class in elementary school that had literature aspects within it. We played a game of Clue where we were in teams of four and had to go around the school to find clues that corresponded with a crime novel we had just read. After finding clues, we had to complete tasks such as drawing a picture or solving a riddle in order to move on to the next clue and find who committed the crime. Doing activities like this made reading involve more than just one person. -
Reading for Fun
Some of the first reading I did for fun while I was a preteen continuing on into being a teen was reading the "Clique" books. Trashy teen literature about experiences I was having or wished I was having were what interested me at the time, and it kept me reading. I loved the fact that I could read fast so I could get through books like this series quickly. -
The Best Teacher
Throughout all of middle school I had the same teachers for every subject. My reading teacher made a major impression on me though. Ms. LaBianca had high expectations of everyone in the class, and seemed to know an individual's full potentional before they had even considered it. Her class was insanely difficult, but she is one of my favorite teacher to this day because of her constant pushing to be your best and encouragement when the best was done. Her love for reading was so evident. -
Tuning into Podcasts
While I was on the college road trip with my dad, we listened to a lot of podcasts in the car. In particular, we listened to some off of a station called "Radiolab". I remember one was about how humans only have three cones in our eyes, so we can only see a certain span of colors. However, lots of animal have more cones than us. One sea creature has seven cones and can see so many colors that we don't even know exist. -
Reading at Storytime
During my senior year of high school, I took a class where I worked in the high school's preschool which also worked as a teaching lab. The children were about 4 or 5. I had the opportunity to teach multiple subjects, but one thing I got to teach was reading. A book would be read to the students, and then an activity would correspond. I read a book about a boy getting ready for school and the acitivity related to the items he would bring to school and those he wouldn't. -
The Pendalouan Press
This summer I was a summer camp counselor. While having a cabin, we would also teach two activities throughout the day. I spent a couple weeks teaching newspaper, where the campers could write stories about camp, conduct interviews, create comics, write riddles or jokes, and put whatever else they wanted into a newspaper that was distributed at breakfast on Friday morning!
