Pinning Down Prosody with Poetry

Hello, everyone!  Andrea here from Reading Toward the Stars to focus on an important aspect of:

What is prosody?  Merriam-Webster says that it is the rhythm and pattern of sounds of poetry and language.  But, what does that mean when we are teaching students to read?

So many times when we teach fluency, the students think we just want them to read fast, but fluency is so much more than reading fast.   We want students to read at a steady pace, not too fast; not too slow; but just right.  To achieve this, we have to teach our students prosody:  pitch, stress, and timing to convey meaning when reading aloud.

Every week, my various student groups work with poetry.  On the first day we either read the poem together or choral read the poem, depending on the grade level.  We talk about the poem to make sure we understand it.  Throughout the week, we do various activities with the poem, like search for special words {sight words, important words, suffixes, prefixes, contractions, rhyming, etc.}.

My third graders need a lot of work with prosody.  They know the words in the poems, for the most part, but really need help with prosody.  Many times they just zip through what they are reading and don't take time to think about how it should sound.  I have started using one of my tried and true favorites for helping students with prosody ~ coding punctuation.

We love to highlight different words in the poems, but my students really liked highlighting punctuation and then reading the poem like it should sound.  After reading the poem really quickly, I had the students find the various types of punctuation in the poem.

We started with the question mark and talked about how it would sound when we read it.  We highlighted it and practiced that one line as a question and not as a question.  We talked about how it should sound and why.

Then we moved on to mark all of the periods in the poem and talked about how we needed to take a breath.  We practiced the poem with and without the periods.  So funny to hear them almost lose their breath without the periods!

The last thing we coded were the words in all caps. We talked about how we needed to read them loudly, as if we were shouting.  Then we practiced it.  This was, by far, their favorite!

I reminded my group that they did not just have to read like this with poetry, but that they should read like this ALL the time.  I gave them these bookmarks to keep with them to help them remember how to read with prosody, or emotion as we call it.  You can grab this freebie {here} or by clicking on the picture below.

I want to leave you with some great places to get some free poems and passages to help students read with emotion.

Giggle Poetry

FreeReading Decodable Passages

Poetry for Kids

CanTeach:  Songs and Poems

Classroom Jr.

Enjoy these resources to help your students gain prosody, an important part of fluency!

What are some ways you help your students gain prosody while reading?