My Literacy History Narrative Draft

Having a first grade teacher who still made her class sing "God Bless America" after saying the pledge of allegiance, my first memory of reading were old Dick and Jane like books. These included readings about animals and other things children enjoy. My first memory of writing is your standard learning how to shape letters with the dotted lines on paper. I think I learned to write well quickly, however it wasn't until second or third grade that a teacher corrected me for always using a capital A at the end of my name instead of  lowercase A. In grade school, we were given short story assignments in which I would usually give the teacher four pages on Friday when the assignment was two pages on Wednesday. I also learned to read well quickly. I usually read the same things as everyone else until about the sixth grade; when everyone was reading The Magic Treehouse or American Girl books, I was reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now that I think about how quickly I learned how to read and write, it kind of makes me sound like a freak who could read and comprehend literature in grade six. However, I wouldn't have been able to do these things if I hadn't had the sponsorship I had. I'd like to say that I learned to write the way I did because it's something I enjoy doing, and while this is true, I also learned to write mostly because of my sister not wanting to play with me, therefore making me come up with things to do when I was bored. This is the same case with reading. My sister is an avid reader, she would either read to me, give me books to read, and so on. We used to hold contests of who could read the same page of a book the fastest, in which I always lost, but things like this helped us grow as readers and get better at reading. Another sponsor I had were my teachers. The thought to read The Scarlet Letter in grade six wouldn't have even entered my mind if the teacher hadn't had the book on her shelf for me to read in the first place. She had more advanced books that I eventually read and understood before my peers. As I continued through school, both of these sponsors continued to challenge me with both reading and writing, and have helped me reach the level of skill in both of these areas.