Day 3: Read
Hello books, magazines, blogs. Hello reading! I think I love you. I am a reader, an avid, avid reader. There is basically no type of text I won’t read. As a child I wanted to learn how to read more than anything. I can remember being so disappointed after I didn’t learn how to read in Kindergarten. But, good old first grade was different. I read anything and everything. I was reading at a fifth grade level by the end of the year. I can remember reading the basal texts in my mom’s classroom. I would read the texts from beginning to end after school while I waited for her to finish up her after school work. It didn’t matter if it was “Go, Dog, Go” text or the literature from the 5th grade text book. I read it. All my childhood, I spent the summers reading. I would finish up a book a day. I read through selling fireworks. I read through troubles, I read through everything. I finally got old enough to read my mom’s fiction books...Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson, and Dean Koontz. In high school and college I savored every reading assignment...The Great Gadsby, 1984, Roll of Thunder...Hear My Cry, Harry Potter. As an adult, I have read most of Oprah’s book club books. I don’t care what genre you throw at me. I will read it. Currently, my most favorite books are the Sookie Stackhouse Chronicles. I have read and reread that series...twice. I am into Vampire/Supernatural romance right now. I just read 50 Shades of Grey...the banned book. I loved it...devoured the trilogy in a matter of days. In my opinion, reading is not to be censored. Even good old Mark Twain with his “N” words should never be changed. Writing is a gift and an insight to times. I would never want to deprive my children of that. To learn from type, from words. Reading is POWER and KNOWLEDGE. It is how we learn things, cherish things, grow more tolerant.
Reading is fundamental in our daily lives. That is why as a teacher it is a cornerstone in my classroom. I teach 6 and 7 year olds, but we read. We learn about life and characters and feelings. We learn so much through books. I am always filled with pride at the end of each year when my students can talk about courage and sacrifice and point out characters and people in history that they learned it from. They choose reading in their downtime when they finish work or they choose to write in their writers workshop journals. My love of print and reading has inspired them to pick up a book or to write a story that someone else will read.
My children, my personal children, as I call them, love books. Wolfie stays up late at night reading. He reads and reads and reads. Maddie had a bit of trouble with fluency, but he knows how much I love reading and picked mysteries to bring home because that is what I like to read. JoJo on the other hand, is a different case. He has a short attention span for books. He won’t sit very long through a book, unless it involves tractors.
Most of my reading, I do on my phone, Mariphone. I have the Nook App downloaded onto it. That way, I have my books with me where ever I go. I can also purchase new books where ever I am. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it gives me instant gratification and bad because it costs money.
