Early Language Encounters
What fun stuff do you recall about your early experienecs with language? Please share your thoughtful, detailed, edited responses below.
Travel in the United States
Assuming there is no pandemic and that you have unlimited resources, where would you like to travel in the United States? What attracts you to this place? What would you do there? Respond with 4 or 5 sophisticated sentences. Use your cheat sheet to add a variety of structures. Proofread and edit your response before publishing. If you fear technical difficulties, type your response in Google first; then copy it and publish to the blog.
When I first learned how to read, I struggled with many things; but I caught on very fast. Some of the books I recall reading with my mom were Love You Forever, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, and I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly series. Some words I always had trouble with were words that had an “h” after the first letter, or that were pronounced that way. I specifically remember struggling with any word that starts with “th”. I also remember reading with my mom in our backyard in the treehouse we had. We would always climb up there and read, and each time we would finish a book she would give me a new one that was a bit harder than the last.
ReplyDeleteAs a child there are some things that I can recall about my early experiences with language. When I was little I loved all Dr. Seuss books. For example, my favorite Dr. Seuss' book to read was “The Cat In the Hat”. I liked to read this book, because it was interesting; and the book was funny. In elementary school I remember sitting in a circle, and everyone was listening to the teacher read “The Cat In The Hat”. When I was little I struggled with certain words. Some of my family were worried about my speech, so my parents took me to a speech doctor; and she taught me how to pronounce words better. My favorite part about going to the appointments was that I always got a jolly rancher after every visit. In fourth or fifth grade we had spelling bees, and I would always try my best to get in them; but I only made it into one. These are some of the things that I can recall about my early experiences with language.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little, my favorite book was ¨The Very Hungry Caterpillar¨. My first time reading that book was very interesting for me. I would always ask my mom what the different foods were in the book. When I would go shopping, I would always pick out a couple things that were in the book ¨The Very Hungry Caterpillar¨. That was the first book my mom read to be when I was little. Before I went to sleep, my mom would read me a bedtime story. It was different everyday. Some of the stories were, ¨Goodnight Moon¨, ¨If You Give a Mouse a Cookie¨, and ¨Llama Llama Red Pajama¨. Those were some of my favorites. One of my first experiences with counting was in preschool. Everyday, my teacher would bring in any amount of items they want, and we would have to count how many were in there. When I was little, the hardest word for me to spell was ¨does¨. I have no idea why, but I would always spell it ¨dose¨. My teacher would always mark off a point until I spelled it right. My favorite thing to do in preschool was to play in the rice box. There was a big container full of rice and toys. We would go over there and just fill up the trucks and cups with rice. I really enjoyed that. I used to talk in front of my stuffed animals when I first started to talk. I would say random things to them that I heard that day from an adult, or my parents. Those are a couple things that I did and say as a little kid.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in first grade to third grade I was always a book level behind the rest of my classmates. I remember I used to read very slowly to remember what I was reading. I didn't have any problem with comprehending what I was reading because of that. The main problem was that when it was timed reading I couldn't do well. Also during that time, I had to take speech class at the school, so during certain classes I would be taken out of the class to go practice. I had trouble with a lot of vowels and I also had a stutter, but I didn't have my two front teeth; that probably was the reason for most troubles. Nearly every year at my old school we would have spelling bees, it started as early as kindergarten. Everyone in the class had to participate, which I hated because I didn't want to speak in front of the class. So when it was spelling bee day, during the first round I would purposely spell the word wrong even if I knew it, so I didn't have to speak anymore.
ReplyDeleteEarly in my life my parents would read to me every night. My mother was in education and understands the importance of learning how to read. When my mom would read to me she would ask me questions about the pictures, and I would answer them to my best ability. One book that I remember my mom reading to me was “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See”. This was also the first book that I read on my own. I created my own little “Brown Bear Brown Bear” book in preschool, so I remember this book vividly. The first chapter books I started reading were the “Goosebumps” series. I would have every book that was out at the time and re read them when I was done. I don’t believe I struggled with reading or writing, but I did prefer reading over writing.
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ReplyDeleteMy earliest encounters with language come from memories of reading, writing and public speaking. When I was in pre-k, my parents and grandparents would sometimes read me books and do what they referred to as “helping” them, by trying to sound out words or read them out loud. I don’t exactly remember what it was called, but from the help of teachers and my family, I read a book all by myself for the first time in first grade. I have memories of some read alouds in my classes when I was little, and I remember that I enjoyed reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. When I first started writing I remember tracing letters over and over, always being reminded to write neatly; and it went from there. The first time I spoke in front of an audience was in 3rd or 4th grade, when we had to do a small presentation of a project we did. I don’t remember being nervous at all, but I have developed a phobia of public speaking in the last few years. I was in the spelling bee twice in middle school, and the first time I was so nervous I ended up eliminating myself on the first word. In 8th grade, I took 2nd place. Since about 6th grade I haven’t been comfortable doing anything in front of any sort of audience.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always loved to read, still do, my parents would read to me every night. They would read the normal bedtime stories everyone else’s parents read “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See” or “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. However, my first real memory with language was was I was in fourth grade and for christmas I asked for Junie B Jones books. I got a bunch of her books all stuffed inside a backpack for christmas. I was so excited and would sit and read for hours. I would bring them to school as we had a little bit of time to read every day. I remember some words being hard but I would just sound them out on my own hoping they were right. I was never big on writing, but I don’t mind it all I remember is tracing over letters that were marked with dashed lines over and over again. And, public speaking is a no from me, I don’t like it at all. I remember when I was younger I would get so nervous I would get butterflies in my stomach hearing the teacher call on me and mumble every word. These are my early memories with language.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning to write as a child. In school, we had a book that had a page for each letter of the alphabet. We would learn to write the letters everyday by using this book. One of my teachers used to put shaving cream on the desks and tell us to write out a word into the shaving cream. I also remember spelling tests. When I was young, a common error I made on all of my spelling tests was putting a h in with. I would spell it like “whith”. I am not sure why I did it, but it was a common error that I made. I remember my parents would always have my siblings and I have a spelling bee together. My siblings were a couple years older than me, so I learned a lot from them. Learning to write and spell was a fond memory of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteIn my younger years, I learned to read by a "book in a bag." We’d receive them from our teachers in kindergarten, and we’d take them home and read with our parents. I remember I was so excited to read them and “level up.” Dr. Seuss also played a big role in my learning experience. I’d sit on a rocking chair with my mom or dad, and they would read to me. Gliding their fingers across the words, I could match the spelling with the sound and become more familiar with them. My dad, being a phenomenal speller, would say a word to me; and I would spell it back to him. That led me to be a good speller like him. My early experiences with reading, writing, and spelling were always fun. To my knowledge, I enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in second grade, I enjoyed writing stories about my cousin, Becca, and my teacher, Mrs. Ferrier. Mrs. Ferrier had told me how she had my cousin in class many years before me. I became inspired. I would make up stories about how Becca would go on vacation with Mrs. Ferrier and her sons or how Becca was a movie star and worked for this kid in my class. The kid was also married to his crush in the stories as a fan service on my end. I would read these stories to my classmates when we had extra time. They seemed to enjoy them as much as I did. My teacher seemed to like them too.
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ReplyDeleteOne of my fondest memories growing up was curling up on my living room sofa with my mom and sister. My mom would read to us before we went to our rooms to sleep. She read us many Dr. Suess books, but my favorites were always The Lorax and Yertle the Turtle. When I got to the third grade, I started reading books on my own. I begged my mom to get me the entire set of A-Z mystery books and I read them all in about two weeks. After that, I read the spin-off series; and then I started reading Star Wars. In the 4th grade I got really interested in Harry Potter, so I finished that series as quickly as possible. My love for reading continued to grow. In the 8th grade I read 25 books total, all being over 200 pages. When I started high school though, I never had any time to read. The only books I ended up reading were the ones assigned for school. The more busy I get, the harder it seems to find reading time. That’s why I hope we get sent online; I would like to get back into the good habit of reading.
My mom started reading to me when I was a baby; consequently, I started reading on my own before preschool. I loved books by Mo Willems and Stan and Jan Berenstain;on the other hand, my favorite book was “Olivia Saves The Circus” by Ian Falconer. Even though I read at an early age, I pronounced a lot of words wrong. I pronounced vanilla like nillvila, and I called McDonald’s Uncle Donalds. During first grade, I made it into our school wide spelling bee. I went to a Catholic school, so it was grades K-8. First grade Milla thought she had a chance, but she lost all that hope when she had to spell squirrel. I still have no idea how to spell squirrel, but spell check is a life saver.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite memory from learning to read involves a book and a bag. When I was in kindergarten, I began learning how to read books. Every Friday, each student in my class got to choose one book to take home in a Ziploc bag. On Sunday nights, the day before my reading was due, my mother and I would sit down in the living room and practice reading the book. My procrastination started young. I remember stumbling on words that I find easy now. When I saw the word though for the first time, I was very confused. I did not understand how it could be spelled that way and sound completely different. My favorite part about the book in a bag was reading the book to my class on the following Monday. I always felt so nervous thinking I would forget how to read. Book in a bag contributed a great deal to my learning; without it, I would not be able to read as fluently as I can today.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always enjoyed reading, ever since I was little, and that most likely stemmed from how much my mom would read to me. I don’t particularly remember many books I enjoyed hearing when I was very young, but according to my mother some of my favorite books were “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?” and “Goodnight Moon,” among others. One of my favorites that I actually remember is “The Kissing Hand.” It was about a mom racoon who would kiss her childs paw and tell him that if he missed her or was scared, he could put his paw against his cheek and it would be as if she was kissing him. Whenever we would read it, she would kiss my hand like the racoon in the book, and it was one of my favorite books to read, even just on my own, and I have a very deep attachment to it because it was something that my mother and I shared together. It’s something that still sticks with me, probably because of how often I read it, and it is a book that I would read to my offspring if I ever have some.
ReplyDeleteLearning to read was a struggle for me and my parents. I had trouble focusing, which continues to be a problem for me today. I watched my cousin breeze through his learning experience without any trouble. When I achieved little victories, I was very proud. The first book I read by myself was about a dentist. It was a simple book, but I was so proud I read the book multiple times. After that, I began reading Fancy Nancy books regularly. The battle with reading carried on for years to come, but after experiencing Harry Potter I have found a love for it.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I don't remember very much of my childhood, especially learning how to read and write. There's a few key memories I have; one time in first grade we were listing words with the suffix -ung, so people were listing words like lung, sung, rung, and etc, I thought I was so smart by saying the word tongue because I thought it was tung. So I was fairly disappointed to find out the true spelling of tongue, although it made me realize just how weird english is. I also remember when I started to read more advanced books how entertaining they were, especially "Junie B Jones", those were definitely my favorite. Junie was a relatable character at the time, young, naive, and moody. My least favorite was learning to write, I remember tracing over those letters in four different colors and that really bothered me. First off, I hate coloring, especially with crayons. Secondly, it would be so much easier just to repeatedly write the letter in pencil and not colored pencil or crayon.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up my dad used to love reading books to me. As early as I can remember, he loved to read “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”. The first encounters I had with reading for myself came from when my dad used to have me sound out the words in those books. Most of the time I couldn’t keep my focus long enough to listen to the whole book, but my father was patient. Tracing my fingers on the book page, I tried to read each line. He would try to get me to listen to him tell a story each night before I went to bed. I was always a strong reader as a child, and I can thank my dad for that.
ReplyDeleteI always loved reading when I was younger. Once I had learned to read I would just sit on the couch all day and read book after book. One of my favorite books was “I Love you Through and Through.” This was also the first book I ever read, although, I would pronounce the word ‘through’ as ‘true.’ My mother would read me this book every night. When I was finally able to read it by myself, I'd mimic the vocal inflections that my mother used when she would read it. I always had trouble pronouncing the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘gorgeous.’ When my little sister was born I would read to her every night. I kept this tradition when my little brother was born as well. One of the most prominent memories I have in relation to language is when I began to write. At least, I thought I was writing. In actuality, I was just making scribbles on a piece of paper and calling them words; I was the only person who could read my scribble writing!
ReplyDeleteI have always loved to read, especially when I was young. My mom read to me very often, and started teaching me how to read and write when I was only about three. We read some books, like “Mrs. Nelson is Missing” and “Twas the Night Before Christmas” during Christmas time, so much that before I could recognize the words on paper, I would be able to recite them from memory. Every week, my mom would take me to the library and we would fill our bags with picture books to read. When I got a bit older, I enjoyed reading my uncles’ old “Goosebumps” books, and my favorite was “How I Got My Shrunken Head”. Using the page numbers of this book, I also learned how to count to one hundred, although at the time I still couldn’t read it on my own. I also remember helping teach my little sister how to read when I was about six, although I was less helpful than I was distracting. The first time I remember speaking in front of an audience was during our first grade play, where I played a grandma and sang. I was much more comfortable speaking in front of people then than I am now.
ReplyDeletePicture books were my favorite as a kid. The colors and illustrations always kept me focused as the page flipped. My mother would read to me every night before I went to bed. We had shelves full of Dr. Seuss books. One of the books my mom would constantly read was "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" As I'm laying in bed my mom would point to different illustrations and ask me questions about the book. I remember repeatedly being asked; "What color is this?" I would always try by best to respond correctly, but as we read the book more, I learned my colors better. When I grew older, we moved onto the chapter books as I learned different words better. I used to ball my eyes out when having to read out loud to my parents. At this point, I missed being read to and would much rather skip my book night and go straight to bed. Rather than sitting and reading out loud. Parts of my childhood have still stuck with me because I still love picture books till this day!
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, one my my most memorable experiences was learning how to say "the". We would always learn new words and language rules every day in kindergarten. One day in particular, our teacher had displayed a card with "the" on it. She asked us if anyone knew how to say it and everyone tried. We had used this word in sentences but never knew how to spell it. She called on everyone and we were all stumped until one kid had finally guessed it. That was the day we all learned about how complex the English language was.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, I did not enjoy reading. If the teacher assigned a reading, I would read it; but that’s where my reading would stop. Although I didn’t read much, I still enjoyed the following books: “The Kissing Hand,” “Sloppy Joe,” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” Whenever I would read, I was always alone; my parents were always working, but they always tried to read to me when they had time. The first book I remember reading by myself was “Little Lucy” by Ilene Cooper. To be completely honest, I don’t remember learning to read; but I do remember learning to write. I wrote many letters backwards, so my teachers and parents thought I was dyslexic; I wasn’t, but I understand how alarming it was. In elementary school, the books that were provided usually had little plays in them. One day, it was my turn to read; I was so nervous. Everytime I would speak, I was told to repeat it because my voice was so quiet. There were many words that held me back, but the most difficult word was “breakfast.” I just didn’t understand how it worked, so it was very confusing for me. My mom always tells me how I pronounced the word “yellow” as “yay-yo” when I was little. My first time speaking in front of an audience was in the second grade during a short school play. It was about an “Arthur’s Thanksgiving.” I played his mother. I’ve never been to a spelling bee, but my third grade teacher held a small one in our classroom. It was Thanksgiving themed, and the word “cornucopia” got me kicked out of it. Spelling was not a strength of mine, so winning the spelling bee did not matter to me.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child, reading was among my least favorite things to do EVER, though my parents made me read. When I did I really enjoyed the Dr. Seuss books, and my favorite one was “The Cat in The Hat”. Eventually when I got older I started reading more and enjoying it, but Dr. Seuss books helped my younger self enjoy reading. I have almost no recollection of my favorite books other than those ones, but then again I didn’t read much at that age. I unremarkably learned how to print the same as everyone else did and have little recollection of the classroom activities I had with reading and writing. When I first spoke in front of an audience, I absolutely hated it. Public speaking is one of my least favorite things. I’ve gotten better at it throughout the years, but when I first started giving presentations I would be extremely nervous; somehow I would always do fine though. Unfortunately all of my early experiences with language are boring, but I have no stories to tell or different memorable books to speak of.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, I loved to read with my parents and grandparents. From the time I first picked up a book until now, I have never disliked reading and in first grade I realized how essential it was. When I was younger, it bothered me that I couldn’t read signs and billboards and so because of that I really began to strive to teach myself different words. One of my favorite memories when I first started reading was going over my great grandma’s house for a sleepover and asking her what different words were. My great grandma came from Italy and only learned how to speak English well, not read and write it. With this, it was a learning experience for the both of us as I sat next to her and we sounded the letters out together. My first book that we read together was “My Dog Buddy” by David Milgrim, and after many sleepovers we finally finished the whole book, reading it fluently. From there on, it became my favorite book and the one that was most remembered. Without my great grandma, I don’t know if I’d be as excited about reading and be as much of an avid reader as I am today.
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