The Four Musketeers

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Manisha Sharma
11 September 2016
UWRIT 1104-042
APA Style
The Four Musketeers of my Literacy Narrative
When I think back to my early childhood, I cant help but to note down the four of the
most influential people, who established my literacy narrative skills: my mom, Mrs. Beapure,
Miss. Jenkins and Mrs. D. To begin with, my mom started the process of learning to read and
write by simply making me practice how to copy words and numbers over and over again in
various workbooks. These workbooks contained lines of mixed of random sentences, and had
spaces below it of two bold lines with a dotted, thin line in-between to carefully copy the letters
according to size. We would sit on the green carpet in my family room every morning around 10
a.m. and start the lessons. My sister was younger, so she didnt learn with me at first. This way, I
grew the ability to recognize how much I should space the tittle above the letter i or where I
should cross a t. Another important skill I developed was learning Hindi from my family.
Although English is my first language, my whole family spoke in Hindi to my sister and I. My
mom purposely did this so that we would be fluent in English over Hindi and excel more in
school. We were never taught to speak or write it, but we fluently understood anything that was
said to us. This caused us to have broken Hindi, but we are able to pick up the pieces and have
become a little more fluent as we try to speak now.
The very first Musketeer
In Kindergarten, we began tracing letters and number with our fingers to get a better
sense of how they should be formed. My teacher, Mrs. Beaupre, used to have stations around the

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classroom with different activities. She had trays filled with shaving cream that were colored in
food coloring and others with colorful sand. When she would say show a letter on the flashcard,
we would trace it in the shaving cream or sand to match the card, and when shed show another
card, wed fluff up the cream or sand and start again.
Silent
As I entered second grade, we began to learn how to silently read in our head. Miss
Jenkins had a small area near the window of the classroom that had pillows everywhere with
little stuffed animals we could read to. The sides of the wall were covered in books and we had
buckets that we would throw our read books into every week. She would sit with me tell me to
read certain parts of a book silently and spit back what it said word for word. Although I dont
remember struggling, Im sure it took a while to get a hang of. This is where I really began to
read and develop the skills to fluently read grade-level books.
Turned out for the best
I remember out of any time in my life, my third grade class was where I struggled the
most with my ability in literacy narrative. Mrs. D pushed us all to write many essays and gave us
prompts to write several times a week. She would limit our essays to one page and timed us as
well. I remember struggling incredibly with going off topic with the writing prompts, grammar,
etc. There was one time where she scheduled my mom to come have a parent-teacher conference
with her. As I sat couple rows in the back, I could hear their discussions as she pulled my green
folder from the stack on the desk.
In class, I assign different topics for the students to write about and I keep them in these
green folders to keep track of their progress. Mrs. Sharma, I have particularly keep note on
Manishas progress throughout the last couple weeks, and well, she seems to be struggling a bit

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* pulls out green folder with MANISHA SHARMA written in black marker *
Well, as I look over her work, she seems to continue to get off topic with these topics. I have a
feeling that shes not able to form the right thoughts into a way she can write about. Mrs. D
slowly mentioned.
Oh. I see. What can be done about this? Should I start making her do some practice prompts at
home? What do you suggest?
That would be a great idea, and I will continue to push her to improve. She is a great student,
but I want you to be aware that this is a little issue going on with her writing.
And just like that, I made it my mission to work harder to improve. I quickly understood
thoughts that should and should not be written, and soon enough, I saw more and more stickers
on my essays.
We came a long way
Perhaps, being fluent in two languages would make me have a whole different experience
or having good writing skills would have set me apart. I believe that the adventures I had
throughout my elementary school allowed me to have a solid foundation for my literacy narrative
skills. There is much room for improvement, but I can look back and appreciate how it all
started, which was all because of my Four Musketeers.