to us every day, allowing us to take turns on the typewriter, recite poems and songs, take turns reading to each other, and finally writing a few small sentences. We also had a heartening contest that whoever read the most books would get a free pizza at Pizza Hut.There are two things I remember Mrs. Lowler did to encourage my literacy skills. One time she made us paint a picture and then we had to present them in front of the entire class. In our presentations we were told to make up a short story about our pictures. Overtime this helped to enhance my imagination for reading. Another thing our teacher did was present us with books as Christmas gifts. I remember my book was called A Mouse House. Inside she wrote that I was an excellent reader and said if we all came back over the holidays being able to read our books we could read anything we wanted. I believed her and practiced my book throughout winter break. She had given me hope for learning.During my Kindergarten years most of my encouragement continued by making up my own short stories with illustrations. Stories I wrote, like the Oddor Beast (1) and The Witch And Too Two Many (2), helped increase my imagination and made me feel as though I was a really great author. When my report card (3) came around and a VG for Very Good was in the Reading box I would get excited to read more.Throughout the beginning of my Elementary school years we were taught literacy by writing creative stories with illustrations. In my story, The Girl Who Had The Magic Finger (4) you can see that I was not great at spelling and completing sentences. I also noticed my tendency to complete things in a big hurry and end sentences with phrases like, And thats the end of that. I continued to learn by putting together little books like, Little People Book (5). These type of books aloud me to read the stories and comprehend what Ive read because they were followed by short questions at the end.By ...
