Reading

My early experiences with reading were both positive and negative. When I was really young my parents would read books to me, my sister and brother before we went to bed. I really liked the Berenstein Bears books for some reason. There were about twenty five of them, and we had all of them.
Then when I was in first grade my sister and I got American girl dolls for Christmas and started reading all of books that came along with them. At first they were too hard for us to read but by the time I was in third grade I started reading them on my own. They were pretty much the first set of more difficult books I read on my own. I learned to really enjoy reading and started reading other more difficult sets of book like Harry Potter.
Even though I enjoyed reading outside of school, I had a lot of difficulty reading school related material. I was not interested in the books we had to read for school in English class and I had to put forth all of my effort to stay focused when reading material that I did not enjoy. I was pretty spacey when I was younger and I had the most trouble reading my history books. I learned that in order to do well in my classes I was going to have to figure out how to get though reading material I did not like. So I ended up breaking down what I had to read into about 15-30 minute intervals so that I would be sure to pay attention.
It ended up working really well and I even started annotating when I was younger so that I would remember what I was reading. But reading was very hard in the beginning. My first experiences with literacy were exceptionally negative. I can remember sitting in class in first grade and just not understanding what was going on. I would become really frustrated that I did not know how to read. I was a really shy kid so I felt embarrassed asking questions so I rarely did.
But my problems caught up with me, when in first grade our entire school had to take the annual, IOWA standardized testing. It was filled with pictures and few words but I was still clueless. My scores were sent to my house and shocked my parents. I started getting extra help and tutoring after school.
Throughout second grade my reading improved but I still needed more guidance. In third grade my teacher Mrs. Noe really helped me succeed in reading. She explained things more clearly and in ways in which I understood. She definitely played a large role in my improvement in reading. Not only did she help me become a better reader, but she got me to enjoy reading! We had a program at our school that encouraged kids to read, and when they reached certain number of pages per month they got rewards! At first I just read to get prizes but then reading got easier for me and I really enjoyed it. Overall, reading was both a positive and negative experience for me when I was younger.