Language Arts

My first experience in language arts began in sixth grade. Of course I had experiences with it before that point but the first time my teacher started using that term was in that grade. Prior to sixth grade “language arts” were referred to as reading and writing. Before sixth grade we had time spaces for only reading and only writing. It was also integrated into other subjects but every day we had specially allotted time for both reading and writing.

                Language arts in the sixth grade included many aspects. My school had three teachers and each of them was responsible for one subject. One taught history, one math, and one language arts. This situation was set up to prepare us for junior high school where we would be having one teacher for each subject. The teacher who taught language arts taught us many aspects of the English language. One was spelling. I was horrible at spelling and hated it. If it weren’t for spell check this entire entry would have many spelling errors. Even the simplest words were wrong. The other two aspects were reading and writing. We were given workbooks that had many chapters. Every week we would complete a chapter. These included reading a story (about three pages long) and write out answers to questions that were given. I was good at this aspect of language arts because I loved reading and I was fairly good at analyzing what I had read. I was also above my reading level having read chapter books in second grade.

                This indicial experience with language arts have stayed with me throughout my education until this very day. It never goes away and constantly comes up in everything including this class. I’m not taking spelling tests anymore but what I have learned will stick with me for the rest of my education and into my teaching career.