At Battlefield Elementary School, students are encouraged to form a positive relationship with reading. Kinsley Cheatham, a freshman here at Heritage High, gained a love for reading and writing through this Accelerated Reader program. Although, that love wasn’t always there. Accelerated Reader (A.R) is an online program that uses points to measure how much reading practice a student is getting. The amount of points that a student receives are based on the difficulty of the book and the length of the book after taking a short quiz.
Cheatham said, “Growing up my family was not the type to shove books in my face. I didn’t start reading for fun until around fourth grade.” Her mother pushed her to start reading and earning points. With Cheatham constantly having her nose in a book, her imagination was bigger than she ever thought it could become. She read a mix of books, ranging from non-fiction to fantasy. She was diving into books that earned tons of A.R points like “Harry Potter,” “Divergent,” and so on and so forth. “Earning A.R points after reading a book always made me feel amazing.” Cheatham said, “At the end of fourth grade I got to go on the trip, and I had gotten the most points out of my entire school. After that I felt so accomplished, even after the trip I still wanted to read.”
She took this passion for books and carried it to the page. Kinsley put together her own ideas and brought them to life with writing. On Google Docs she would write her own poems and stories in her free time.
Cheatham said, “When I’m older I hope to publish a book.” That being a poetry book or a novel, as long as it’s something Cheatham is proud of. “Being in Journalism I’m hoping to broaden my horizon and someday make my dreams come true.”
Now in high school, Cheatham is going to work hard to pursue her passion. In the future, keep an eye out for the young upcoming author Kinsley Cheatham. Let her story of how she formed her love for reading inspire you to pick up that book.
