When I was in secondary school, I had a very positive reading experience. My best friend, Rubí, would always read books whenever we were in Ms. Brooks sixth-grade class. My whole life, she was my "book worm" friend, the one that was always reading fiction books because they just seem so interesting to her. I clearly remember her telling me to start reading this book series that Ms. Brooks had. It was the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. This was the first dystopian book that I had read and after this series, I fell in love with books that talked about dystopian societies. These were the books and encouraged me to read in my free time and whenever I was home. This is where I started gaining imagination, creativity and overall vocabulary and sentence structure. You see, at home we only spoke Spanish. I was in a bilingual classroom up until second grade and .To be quite honest I don't ever really remember learning English. I just acquired it over time. As I reflect back, I know that during this time in middle school is when I started acquiring my comprehension, vocabulary and writing skills.
To me, in order to have a positive literacy environment, We have to encourage kids to read books that are interesting to them. Books that are relevant, interesting, and up-to-date with what our society deems interesting. I can say out of personal experience that the best way for a child to truly start reading books are reading books that are interesting to them. Also, it's important for us as teachers to expose our students with books. For example, it would be nice for us as teachers to recommend books to our students, that way they have an idea of where to start and read something that it can catch their attention. Something that is a little harder to do in the lower grades is creating a book club discussion with and students and teaching them how to read a section and discuss about it.
Ideally, what I would want to instill with my students is that there is a book for everyone out there. Just grab a book and start reading it! There are so many great books out there, we just need to be able to find it. By doing this, it will help out a child with their overall literacy better than any elaborate lesson we could ever give.
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