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Age 4: Exposure to books
At age four, I was exposed to a lot of my elder sisters' chapter books and school textbooks. I used to pretend to read them, even though I didn't even know the alphabet or how to count. I just knew I couldn't wait to learn how to read -
Age 5: Kindergarten
At age 5, I started kindergarten. In this year I learned how to spell my name and memorized the alphabets. We did not truly learn how to read, but because I wanted to learn so badly, I did start to recognize the spellings of certain words. We didn't learn formal phonics, but we did learn things like "A is for Apple" -
Age 6: First grade
In this year, I started learning how to actually read. I had site words which I learned mostly by memorizing them, and then lessons to teach us how to sound out words we don't know. I believe this is when the formal phonics lessons began -
Age 7:Advanced reading
In second grade, I tested into the advanced reading class. I was passionate about learning to read and it resulted in moving to the higher class and remaining in higher reading/language arts classes for the majority of my grade school -
Age 9: First chapter book
In third grade, I finally read my first chapter book. My goal was to eventually be able to read a chapter book like my sisters and I finally reached it! -
Age 13: Visiting the library
This was the first year I ever visited the public library. My oldest sister got her license and took me there. As an advanced reader, I was ecstatic and enjoyed reading a variety of books of genres I couldn't find in my school library. -
Age 20: Learning to read another language
At age 20 I had to move to Pakistan to care for my grandmother. I am originally from there, but I was raised in America and did not speak the language (urdu) well. In this year I improved my Urdu by being immersed in the language and learned how to read. I learned the alphabet, recorded someone reading two pages to me, and practiced reading like them -
Age 21: Became fluid reader of Urdu
After a year of practice, I considered myself a fluent read of Urdu. I based this off being able to read urdu captions as quickly as I am able to read English. You don't realize how fast those captions and subtitles move until you learn a new language! -
Age 22: Being an English tutor
I was living in Pakistan and I was in English. Many families asked me to help their kids with English, So i started tutoring English speaking, reading, and writing. This even improved my English as I had to learn a lot of grammar rules -
Age 28: Teaching English as a para educator
This year, I became a middle school para educator and support student in their English classes. I am seeing that a lot of kids don't know how to read well and I have been happy to put my tutoring skills to good use and help these kids better understand what they are reading