I’m sure there are plenty of instances before second grade where I read and wrote stories. However, the most vivid and earliest memory I have is from second grade, so I’ll use that. I had to write my own version of a story from our large anthology about a magic pot that multiplied everything that went inside. I remember being so excited to create my own story based off what we read. It was done entirely in class and we had special paper with a fancy space for a title and we were allowed to write our stories however we wanted. I remember thinking my story was fantastic and I’m sure I received a fine grade. It was put in our second grade portfolio of work and I happened upon it maybe five years later. Reading over it again I realized how many details from the actual story I had “borrowed” and used as my own. I wondered if I truly thought those details were of my own invention or if I knew I was taking them almost directly from the story. As a first attempt at using a template to create my own story I’m sure I just wanted it to be as good as I believed the original to be, and what better way than to use ideas directly from the story? Obviously now this would never be fine (people fail classes for doing this) but as an eight year old with a newly developing literary imagination I’m sure it was just fine. We work with what literacy we have at the time and grow from each experience.