Jacob Henson
English 101-5:30
Dr Sonia Bergert
October 20th
Enjoying
reading
When was the first time you learned to love
to read? Even if you don’t love to read everyone’s had an enjoyable experience
from reading. Reading is a wonderful thing. You can gather lots of information
from picking up any book and just reading a page or two. In my case it really
improved my grades and improved my education experience as a whole My first enjoyable experience occurred for me when
I was ten I was in fourth grade and went to Green Mountain elementary. I
struggled as a student. I had many problems when reading and trying to
comprehend literature. I was placed in many different study groups and classes
prior to this time to help me be more successful at reading and writing. But
there was one problem with this. Reading and writing weren’t enjoyable for me
at all. I would doing anything possible not to read or write. I would skip a
study group I was supposed to go to during recess on certain days. Almost every
time I had a writing assignment due I would pretend I was sick at home just to
not attend class. I wouldn’t do any reading or writing at home for homework.
But in fourth grade a lot of this changed.
My fourth grade teachers name was Mrs.
Langholff. She was a tall woman with short black hair that was usually curled. She
was a mid-aged woman, I believe in her mid-30’s. She dressed in black am
usually long dresses from most of the times I can recall seeing her. She had
two sons that went to the school also. One was named Conner the other was named
Keagan. She was one of my favorite teachers of all time she was always a kind
lady and helped me during this time because I had just transferred from Sand
Hill Elementary and I was having a hard transition.
Once a month our class would go to library to
check out books. The walls of the library were all white with large bookcases
lining them full of books. In the center of the large room was smaller book
cases running parallel to each other. Next to this off to the side was a
section full of tables to sit at and read. And off to the back of the room was
a computer lab. We had a whole month to
read the book. The library was always quite because as I remember we had a very
strict librarian who didn’t like any noise. But for some reason, I had no idea
why but she was always nice to me. I don’t remember her name but she was a very
short woman with short black hair. She was an older lady I could tell because
she had a very wrinkly face and many grey hairs. The first couple months of
this I always picked one of the few books that I had already read or books that
previous teacher read to the class. But after a while I ran out of books to do
this for so I had to come to grips with the situation and actually pick a book
to read. The only problem though was I had no idea what to read and was very
bad at deciding on what to read.
At first I just walked around and talked to
friends and looked at picture books. But eventually everyone had sat down with
books that they had checked out and I was the only one still looking. So after
a long time of myself aimlessly walking around the library mostly just trying
to pass time and all of the other kids were sitting down reading Mrs. Langholff
came up to me, And said “Do you need help finding something to read? You’ve
been walking around for 20 minutes and still don’t have a book.”
I did need help so I said “Yeah, I can find
anything.”
“What kind of books do you like to read?” replied Mrs. Langholff
“Adventure” I said
“Have you read Harry Potter?” said Mrs. Langholff
“No I don’t like Harry Potter.” I explained
“Have you read The Series of Unfortunate Events?” said Mrs. Langholff
“No. What’s that?” I questioned
“It’s about three orphans that try to escape a man their placed in foster care with” said Mrs. Langholff
“Okay I’ll try that I guess” I replied with
So I went
over to the check out to check out the book. The librarian looked at the book
and said “This has always been a popular book! And one of my all-time
favorites.”
I still
wasn’t convinced to read it even after my teacher and librarian both
recommended it and said it was good. I didn’t end up reading the book at all
with the class time I had in the library. I didn’t even start reading the book
until the whole month was almost over. A couple days before my time was up to
read the book my mom finally forced me to start reading the book. Once I
started reading the book I didn’t stop until I was about half way through! I
was a slow reader so I had been reading for couple hours. I was so intrigued by
the story I couldn’t stop for the longest time which was very unusual for me.
Normally I hate reading and everything to do with it. Mainly because I’ve never
been good at it so I never really tried. The next day I came home laid in my
bed and I read the last half of the book again without stopping. I was so
interested in the story about the orphans that were placed into a very bad
foster home. I went to school the next day and took the quiz on the book. I had
gotten 100%. I was also so delighted that I received 100 %, I had whole new
motive for doing my school work. I
enjoyed the book so much next time the class went to the library I checked out
the next book in the series. For the rest of the year I continued going to the
library and checking out the books until I read them all. From there on out it
was easy to pick up almost any book and read it while keeping interest in it.
After
discovering these books and reading the whole series I learned to enjoy
reading. I became a daily reader. Before this time it was very rare for myself
to actually pick up a book and decide to read it. Which I did almost every
night after this time. This experience has overall made myself a better reader.
If this moment did not happen my life could have been affected dramatically.
Before this time I struggle very much with reading and I would need a lot of
extra help from teachers and tutors. This story matters to me because it
overall made me a better reader by helping me comprehend stories and giving
myself a bigger vocabulary. It helped me with my education as a whole with
subjects such as math, history, writing, and of course reading.
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