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Kendra Malachi

Literacy Autobiography

Scholar Student

"Sit down Kendra, lets practice our writing". These are words I heard very often at a very
young age. My mom would sit me down at the dining room table every evening and have me do
my "homework". My homework was various sheets of paper where she would write a letter, dot
the letter so I could trace it three times, and leave a whole line for me to practice writing it on my
own. She taught me the correct way to hold a pencil, the certain degree you had to turn the paper
in order to write, the whole nine.
Whenever I did not meet her standards, like when my "O" was not circular enough or my
lines were not touching in my "Es", she would have me start over and write that letter over and
over again until it looked perfect and even fifty more times after that. I quickly caught on to
writing letters accurately so we moved on to writing short words. My mom used the same
method as she did for writing letters, but the intensity of it increased and she became more
critical. She paid close attention to how much space I left between the letters in the word, how
and where my letters hit the lines of the paper, and even how I dotted my "i".
My mom did the same thing for reading also. Every evening we would sit down and go
over the vocabulary words she gave me. She skipped sight words completely and started with
vocabulary words. "Flood, pour, cry" for example. Not only would she have me read the list of
words, she also had me learn the definitions and give an example of the word. We moved on
from reading short simple words, to short simple sentences such as "I like to run". My mom
began incorporating what I was reading into my writing "homework". Whatever sentence I read,
I had to write it. Nice and neat. She had a large collection of books due to her working for the

Kendra Malachi

Literacy Autobiography

Board of Education. Our favorite book to use was the huge book that contained many different
stories in it. We would read it so often I began to memorize the stories in it.
My mom had me do this every single day until I started kindergarten. You would think
because of all of the excessive practice I would learn to hate reading and writing, but in reality, it
was not that bad. I quickly became adapted to the routine and grew to love reading and writing. I
was five years old and could read short sentences and write neater than a third grader. All of my
mom's strenuous teaching paid off and I was very well prepared for school, maybe a little too
prepared.
"Scholar Student" was something each and every one of my elementary school teachers
referred to me as. I went to a small Catholic school where we were broken into groups based on
our instructional level for the main school subjects. Of course I was always in the highest group,
the green group. Our teacher would work with one group at a time while the other groups sat at
their desks working on their classwork. In the green group, we moved at a much faster pace than
the yellow and red groups and we also did more challenging work. There was always the least
amount of people in the green group than the other two. Because we were in the highest level
group, the teachers had high expectations for us.
For writing, we started out doing the same thing my mom used to practice with me,
tracing letters and writing them on our own. We quickly moved from that to writing short words
such as "dog", "tree", and "red" for example. Writing in school was slightly different than writing
at home because my mom used construction paper and used a ruler to draw lines on it. At school,
the paper was an off white, brownish color with red and blue lines. The space to write in between
the lines was huge, bigger than what I was used to but I adjusted to it well, along with the fat
pencil that I never once seen before.

Kendra Malachi

Literacy Autobiography

For reading, unlike my mom, my first grade teacher, Sr. Donna, gave us a list of sight
words we were to practice. At the end of every week, she would call us one by one to sit with her
and recite the sight words to make sure we knew them. Moving on later in the year, Sr. Donna
gave us a sheet of poems we were to learn to read and somewhat memorize. Again, she would
call us one by one and assess us on how well we could read them. She focused on our tempo, our
fluency, and our pronunciation. From doing this exercise, it was discovered I spoke a little bit too
fast. My teachers put me in a speech class so I could adjust to talking slower, at a more
understandable rate and so my words would not run together.
In my early education years, the big writing assignments of the year was making cards for
Mother's Day and also Father's Day. This was a huge deal for us because at a young age, of
course you want everything to be perfect for mommy and daddy. When we first learned to write
letters, Sr. Donna centered her focus on teaching us how to start a letter with addressing who the
letter is to, making sure we said "Dear" before their name and a comma after it, and also our
salutations. We would take what seemed like hours thinking of something good we would want
to write in our card. Once we finally figured out what we wanted to say came the even harder
part, writing it down. I would write my message very slowly, thinking that the slower I write the
neater it looked. I remember I would dot my "Is" with tiny flowers and doing the same for my
periods for my Mother's Day cards. For my Father's Day cards, I would dot my "Is" and make
my periods with a smiley face or a tiny basketball.
Moving further into my elementary years, our writing became more individualized and
we had more freedom on what we wanted to write about. Every so often we would have to write
letters to our Shut Ins. For this, we were given the opportunity to write about a topic of our
choice but it was to be more lengthy than the cards we made previously in elementary school.

Kendra Malachi

Literacy Autobiography

My teacher at the time, Sr. Maria, would pick certain people who wrote exceptionally well who
she wanted their letter to actually be sent. Of course I was one of the students who was picked.
We had to write a rough draft of our letter and then write it very neatly on the fancy paper she
gave to us that would be sent to our Shut Ins, in cursive of course.
Something I really liked about writing in elementary school was when we had
independent writing activities where we got to write freely. We were instructed to "just start
writing" and write any and everything that comes to mind. I remember writing about a flying
grilled cheese sandwich and thats about it. Another thing I liked was when we got in groups and
had to create a story. One person would start writing for 5 minutes and then pass the paper to the
next person. The next person had to read what the people before them wrote and add on to the
story. These were always fun and interesting to do. It sparked our imagination and made us
excited to write and also read.
In middle school, we learned how to write essays. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Sequeglia,
taught us about the five paragraphs that were in an essay and what to include in each. "The first
paragraph is the introduction. This should grab your readers attention." She taught us how to
make our introductions interesting while including a topic sentence and what your next three
paragraphs will be about. "Next, you have your body paragraphs." The body of your essay are
the next three paragraphs. Each of these should be focused on one point relating to your topic
sentence and very, very detailed. "Last but not least, is your conclusion". Your conclusion should
restate your whole essay and wrap everything up. These are the guidelines we used when writing
throughout middle school. By this time our indentation, spacing, and paragraph structure was
"excellent" as Mrs. Squeglia put it.

Kendra Malachi

Literacy Autobiography

"Scholar Student" is a term I have grown to be accustomed to over the years. My mom
set the foundation for me at such a young age, that it followed me throughout my schooling.
Working hard became a habit. My writing improved over time. In high school, my writing
expanded, whether it was a persuasive essay on why high school students should not have
homework, an article for the newspaper, interviewing teachers in the school, or lesson plans for
the teaching class I was taking. Once college came I felt as if I did it all when it came to writing.
That was until I received my first field report in my education class. I had never written a paper
that long before in my life. I learned that writing in college has to do with strategy and
experience but what is most important, is the way you process everything and write it down. That
is where I still stand today, working on strategies and gaining experience. The rest is still being
written...literally.

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