A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Dr. James Schnug present at the Literacy for All Conference on the topic of phrasing. If you would like to read more about this topic, Schnug wrote about his research in an article called Paying More Attention to Phrasing in Fluent Reading in the Fall 2019 issue of The Journal of Reading Recovery. Dr. Schnug opened my eyes to the importance of working on phrased reading in early lessons.
Schnug (2019) writes that we want our students to read, “with phrasing that reflects the language structures and the comprehension of the author’s message” (p. 16). Research supports the idea that children begin their early reading instruction with a sense of oral language phrasing. When you listen to young children retell stories in their own words you can hear them “read” in meaningful phrases. We, as teachers, disrupt this phrased “reading” and slow our students down in order to prompt for close attention to:
- word by word matching with their finger
- a particular high-frequency word that we want the student to learn
- how a word looks to improve their monitoring
Whenever we slow a student down we need to remember to provide support with speeding back up when the child is ready.
It is important that we do not wait too long to plan for phrasing work with our students. Habitual finger pointing and word by word reading can be hard to break when students become accustomed to reading in this manner. Schnug demonstrated how we can teach for phrasing using a student’s familiar texts at levels 1/2 texts. These early texts can provide a manageable scaffold for students to work on phrased reading early in their lesson series.
Phrasing can have a big impact on a student’s understanding of the text and his/her ability to use meaning as they are reading. In Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, Marie Clay does not site a particular level to start work on phrasing. Instead, she tells us that once directionality and one-to-one matching is established we should begin working on phrasing.
Only careful observation and good judgement by the teacher will tell her when the child should be encouraged to speed up his responding because his one-to-one matching is secure. Do not except slow, staccato, word-by-word reading. This will become a habit that it very hard to break.
Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, p. 125
I highly recommend reading pages 123-126 in Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals in regards to procedures for teaching fluent reading.
There are many places across a Reading Recovery lesson that teachers can have their student work on phrasing.
Phrasing in Familiar Books
When having students read their familiar books it is helpful if the first familiar book is one that a student knows well and can read through without any teacher interruptions. The child will know the meaning of the story and words, so they will be freed up to work on phrasing. The second and third familiar books can be books in which the student has a little more learning yet to be done. We can extend their knowledge of phrasing with these books. Be persistent with reminding the child to take out their finger if they don’t need it. A gentle non-verbal prompt can be used or a quiet reminder as the student turns the page in order to be least disruptive to the reading.
Show students how to put words together. When students put words together they are better able to use intonation to make their reading more meaningful. When we reinforce phrasing throughout the lesson we are placing emphasis on the importance of meaning.
Start with small manageable phrases.
Running Record
As we take a running record on the second read from the new book read the day before, we can listen to how the student sounds. As far as coding phrasing, I like to draw a “swoop” underneath the words that were read together. I also note if a particular page or section sounded word by word by writing “wxw”. I can then take the student back to the page with word by word reading and support the student with making a particular part sound better. I would only do this with a page that was read fairly accurately with very little problem solving needed. At the end of the running record, I make a quick notation about how the book sounded to help me plan future fluency work.
For this particular student, I chose to have her work on reading in meaningful phrases on both page 2 and page 4.
Writing
Writing is a powerful time in which we can reinforce fluency with a message that our student has ownership over. From early lessons, once one-to-one is established, we can encourage students to keep their finger out when rereading their message during writing. When we cut up a student’s message we can put the message into phrased groups. Students will start putting the words in phrased groups on their own once they realize that this work is important.
This is how the student initially put together their cut-up sentence.
We had worked on putting the cut-up in phrases the day before, so I prompted her to think about what words would sound good together. This was her rearrangement.
New Book
Teach students how to say meaningful units of words together throughout the work in the new book. Teachers can have students practice putting words together during the book orientation. During the reading, teachers might want to say, “Try that part again. Make it sound like talking” (be careful not to interrupt the reading too much). At the end of the book, we can take the student back to a page to have him/her try to read a page with better phrasing, intonation, etc.
In Summary
Sometimes work on phrasing can be put on the back-burner as we teach our students how to attend closer to print. Once students show that 1:1 and directionality are secure it is imperative that we teach our students what good reading sounds like. Then we need to support them and hold them accountable for making their reading sound meaningful.
If you liked this post you might also like:
Setting Students up for Fluent Reading
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