When I was younger I only knew how to speak Spanish and never really understood how I learned to speak English. I guess it was all the cartoons and Disney movies that helped me out. My parents didn’t speak English that well and only used Spanish when we were home so I wasn’t fluent in English when I started going to school.
When I look back at my first years of elementary school I can’t remember a lot of it. But when I do look back at a clear memory I realize that it’s like I’m watching a silent picture film without the descriptions of what’s going on. I can see everything that’s going on but when I see the students and teacher talking I don’t know what they’re saying. I remember for kindergarten just writing down letters and looking at the other student’s papers to see if I was doing it correctly. I don’t think it made a different if I knew a lot of English in kindergarten because the other kids didn’t know that much either. As a class, all we knew was that crayons were delicious.
In one moment when I was in my first grade class, all the students were drawing on a blank piece of paper. We didn’t get to draw whatever we wanted because the teacher was instructing us what we needed to do on the paper. I remember seeing the teacher next the board talking and then drawing and the students drew what she wanted them to draw. I had to wait and see what the kid next to me was doing and copied what he did. I didn’t last long in that class, the teacher decided to have me moved into a class that was for bilingual students. In that class I understood everything and my memories for that class have sound. I remember practicing writing my first full sentence in English, it was about a mouse. I remember telling my brother in English not to call me my nickname around my friends. I would practice a lot of English with my brother since we were a year apart we had almost identical knowledge of the English language. I started to learn more English but maybe that was due to the Power Rangers blessing me with their presence on Saturday mornings on my television screen. In my second and third grade I was still in bilingual classes but I was getting more comfortable with my English. The second grade was great for me because that’s where I read one of favorite books and reenact it in a small play. A lot of our time was spent around the topics the books discussed so every time I was willing to do class work. I remember that my best friend and I were the first to check out an English book from the school library from our third grade class.
For the remainder of my elementary grades I had to go to a new school and I was placed in normal classes. My fourth grade year was full of memories playing with toys while the teacher was looking away and not understanding some of the class work. Halfway through the fifth grade I was placed in a program that was helping me with my writing and comprehension. It helped me out a lot because sixth grade went by great and I realized that the science project I did in the fourth grade was a disaster. I think the only reason I got credit for the project was because everyone liked the mess the volcano made.
It seems that school played a large part in my literacy because that was the only place where I was learning and using the English language. Outside of school a lot of my resources were limited to entertainment stuff. Television isn’t bad in helping out but I don’t think that the teachers want you to write about why Tommy was the best Power Ranger since he beat up Jason in the karate tournament.
No comments:
Post a Comment