Literacy History

 Growing up in Jamaica had a lot of impact on my literacy skills. From a very young age, it was instilled in me to be a good reader and somewhat of a writer. By the age of 2, I was able to spell and write my name, my parents’ name and my address. My mother, being my inspiration and best literacy supporter, taught me most of the concepts of reading, like sounding out words that I don’t know, and remembering the words that I was previously taught. She would draw letters and have me trace over them,or play the letter game with me, which consisted of each of us taking turns to draw a letter mid-air and the other would have to guess what letter it was. Another non-school related influence that I had were my older cousins. Of course, my other family members played a role in my literacy development as well, but I spent most of my time playing and conversing with my cousins, so it was natural that I picked up on some of the things that they were doing, which included speaking and reading. I was always encouraged by my family and teachers to be my most literate self. 

My past teachers played a key role in my literacy journey, seeing as it was their job to teach me. They groomed me to become an individual who was capable of understanding words and their meanings. One of my earliest experiences with literacy was when I entered a spelling bee contest in the second grade. Not only did it boost my vocabulary and my ability to accurately spell words, it also boosted my confidence. Seeing the pride in my mother and teacher’s faces after I spelt a word correctly made me feel assured. I carried that same feeling with me to the sixth grade when I joined my school’s Junior Schools’ Challenge Quiz team. Granted, I was specializing in mathematics on the team, but most of the questions were word problems, so I still needed to be able to listen to the problems, understand them and transfer the information onto paper so I could answer the questions correctly and give my team a point. One lesson I learned from this experience was to really listen carefully to the questions that were being asked, because during our official match against another school I heard the question wrong, so of course, the answer was also wrong. That one point would’ve made a difference for us that day, because at the end of the match, the scores were tied and a tie-breaker had to be used. With that being said, I’m still grateful for the experience and for the practices leading up to the official match because it helped me to achieve my goal of doing well on my Grade Six Achievement Tests, or GSAT. In order to be all-rounded and well prepared, our teacher would make us switch our subjects in practice, which was ultimately one of the reasons why I did so well on my GSAT, and made it to the high school of my dreams, which was Wolmer’s High School for girls.