Rhonda Yates


Literacy Vignette

For as long as I can remember, reading has been a huge thing in my life. When I was a child I remember watching Sesame Street.. Mom says that is how I learned the alphabet by watching day in and day out. This was the start of my learning to read. Back when I was five years old, not all kids went to kindergarten, I was one of the lucky ones who did. There I read my first words.
I can recall a salesman coming to our house when I was probably seven years old, he was selling sets of books. Dr. Suess books, I can remember begging for them, but mom and dad wouldn't buy them. So I would go the library at school to get them. The library was very special to me, there I could check out any book I wanted. I remember loving the Peter Rabbit books. As I got older the more I read. W e had a contest in my sixth grade class to see who could read the most books in a month, I won. I loved to read the Judy Blume books at that age. Any book about a teenager getting into trouble was by favorite.
By High School my reading pretty much stopped because of too many textbooks that I had to read. But I still remember reading romance novels. I was particularly fond of them. But after High School I began to venture out in my reading.
My favorite books to read now are Mystery novels. Ones that have adventure and go to far off places. Ones with romance are especially dear to me, I can live out romantic situations with the characters in the books. I love the who-done-it books. And, are- they-going-to-get-out-of-this situation books. \tab \f0 Reading takes me to places that I will probably never see. It makes me live out adventures. I sometimes can actually feel the love that the characters are feeling. I get swept away by the stories. I, as a child, loved to read. And I am still loving to read. I hope in my classroom my students will see how much I love to read and will become readers themselves.