When going over the readings this week one thing that stood out too me came from the "Creating Fluent Readers" article by Timothy Rasinski. I found the part on the third piece of the fluency puzzle- prosodic reading- to be very interesting and almost enlightening. To me, there seems to be such an emphasis on just getting kids to simply learn how to read and understand what reading is to them (what the parts of the story are, the title, making sure they understand what they just read...) that some might forget there is even more to reading, more to being a fluent reader. I think prosodic reading is very important to reading and it helps teach children to pause at commas or periods, bring excitement to their voice while reading an exclamatory sentence or statement, or even changing their tone when changing from character to character.
I have found this is something that I was never really taught but learned over time. Today, I now I need to pause at periods and commas but I still struggle when reading out loud to bring excitement to my voice or "character" to it when changing from one character to the next. I have found when I read to my daughter that sometimes I am just reading flat and boring and she seems to loose interest. But tonight, actually, I tried to vary my voice and change it when I came to dialogue or something exciting happening in the story and I found my daughter was laughing at parts she thought were funny; in a sense she was feeling what the characters were just because I was reading the story with more passion. I am sound foolish to be but a story is simply just words on paper, it is up to us to make it exciting and full of life- something teaching prosodic reading does :)
Being able to change our voice to express changing characters and intonation is so beneficial to young children. It is exciting to hear that you are trying it out on your daugther. It is true we must be taught this skill and often it is overlooked.
ReplyDeleteBeing read aloud to was one of my favorite things in elementary! Our librarian had the BEST voices for different characters and she made us all so interested and involved in the story. It is definitely such an important part to reading that a lot of people do not focus on! Good job with trying new things with your daughter! That is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI love your last sentence about reading! I really think it is up to the reader to make the story its most interesting. I think it is very important to put all of that passion and expression into reading aloud to children. Not only will they enjoy stories more, but they will also have a model of how they can read. Sometimes it is hard to put all of the punctuation into use while reading, but it sure does make a story better!
ReplyDeleteProsodic reading really does make stories come to life. Reading aloud to children really helps them understand how to read with expression as well as the importance of it.
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