My dad told me this story when I was in 4th grade and had to write a biography about myself - I asked him for a funny story, and after rejecting the "you were dropped on your head as a baby" story, I received this one. Once upon a time when I was five, I started kindergarten and I was very excited. A few weeks after school began (or maybe it was only a week, I don't know) my parents came in for a parent-teacher conference. The meeting was all fine and dandy until my teacher mentioned something about me learning to read (sorry, I wasn't there and don't know specifics). My dad looked at the teacher confused and replied, "Learn how to read? Kris already knows how to read - she's been reading for months!" From that point on I was no longer allowed to pretend I couldn't read and was forced to read one-on-one with my teacher during nap time. The end.
I remember learning to read by sitting on my dad's lap and going through Hooked On Phonics. As for anything else having to do with language - I do not know. Honestly, I hardly remember Hooked On Phonics. I remember each level had a different color and I never made it to the last level. I'm honestly very sorry, but I don't remember much about learning language. I remember speech therapy when the therapist told me not to put my tongue between my teeth when I said "sss," and I remember in the 5th grade illustrating being "in a pickle" with two different pictures for two different meanings (my picture was in the newspaper and it filled up a fourth of the page - I was excited).
I'm not entirely sure how this impacts me as a student learner. Obviously, I am taking my knowledge and putting it into every day practice, but I'm not entirely sure how it got there.
Maybe what I should take from this is that I should make the experience more memorable for my students. I'm not entirely sure how important it is to remember the process of learning something, but now I'm confused has to how I ever learned anything at all. I think I take for granted the fact that the knowledge is now just a part of me. I want my students to enjoy the process of learning language and to gain some sort of memorable experience that will stick with them, and an experiences that helps them to learn at the same time. They should have a better language story than being a sinful five year old.
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I disagree... I think there is a lot you can take from this assignment. 1) You've spent some time thinking about who you are as a learner. 2) You communicated with your family about how you learned and their philospophies in teaching you (sitting w/ your dad w/ Hooked on Phonics) 3) You've considered how important it will be for you to have meaningful experiences for your students. Sometimes the learning isn't in the remembering of specifics...it's in the process of thinking.
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