Lisa Morgan Wolcott 1/17/14 Composition 1102 Literacy Narrative Growing up I was never the best reader or writer.

Thats probably why I never enjoyed doing either of them. I struggled through elementary school with this. My first remembrance of learning to spell was in kindergarten but there was one main event in my life that has stuck out to me that helped advanced my literacy. This moment in my life was between the third and fourth grade when I needed a tutor to help me with my reading and writing. In kindergarten my teacher Mrs. Rosen thought it was important to start learning to spell right away. In her classroom she had a carpet on the floor that the class would all sit in the middle. She would tell us simple words, like dog, and we would have to run to the letters on the carpet and spell out the word. It was simple but its the first experience I remember with learning. The big event in my life that changed my literacy overall started when I was in second grade and was tested for dyslexia. I was tested at my elementary school because I was developing slower than the other kids in my grade and my father has dyslexia and it runs on his side of the family. Luckily for me it has never held me back a grade but it is still something I struggled with throughout middle school, high school and even today. This led me to have to get a tutor in third grade and continued into fourth grade. She was another teacher that had worked at my school. Her name was Mrs. Harris. She would come to my house once a week, every Thursday, and we would do many different activities to help me practice my writing and reading. Half the time we would use different workbook sheets to help with my spelling and writing in

general. I would have to write sentences and spell the words at the best of my ability. The other half of my tutor session was she would bring different books and she would have me read the book to her. She was able to help me read words that I didnt know. We practiced reading a lot and sounding out words that I didnt know. This was also around the time I started having to take the FCAT. Once a month I would take practice English parts of the standardize test. She would grade it and we would go over it all in one session. Mrs. Harris was someone who had a great influence on my literacy. She was there to help and encourage me through dealing with my dyslexia. I feel that my parents played a large part in help my literacy. They were the ones that forced me to get a tutor and to work on reading. If I had never gotten a tutor I dont know how well my literacy would be today. Because I was so young dealing with this issue it wasnt as easy to play off as easy as it is for me today. Many of the times now someone could read my writing and have no idea that I deal with dyslexia. With the technology there is today, like spell check, its harder to tell that I struggle when writing sometimes. Also with the use of Google I can just look up a word that I dont know and it can even pronounce it for me so I can hear the way it is said. My literacy has still advanced greatly even though my dyslexia might hinder it. I have my tutor Mrs. Harris to thank for that.