Expression

Once More With Feeling

Like most little kids, my nephew Taylor loves being read to. But after five times through Curious George Rides a Bike, I’m tired of it, even if he isn’t. So as we go for number six, I’m a little off my game. My voice is flat, my energy’s low, I lack all semblance of what’s-gonna-happen-next enthusiasm. And Taylor can tell. “No. Read it the right way, Uncle Steve,” he insists. At the tender age of four, Taylor is already an expert at reading assessment. He knows that the right way to read is with expression.

Our students know this, too. They just don’t know they know it. They hear us read with expression all the time, and they know at least intuitively that how we read is a little different than how they read. But they can’t figure out exactly what that difference is. And that’s why it’s important to teach expression.

Expression is something all teachers can do. But it’s not something we often talk about. Most of us don’t think consciously about expressing a text; it just happens. So when I talk about it with kids, I start by sharing the following ideas:

• Make it sound like someone’s reading to you. For kids who’ve been read to at home, this is a natural cue to imitate other good readers. For kids who haven’t been read to at home, I point out that they’ve been read to at school by teachers, librarians, and other adults. Later on, I’ll model reading expressively and ask the kids to describe the things I’m doing with my voice. This will give us a set of classroom criteria for expression.

• Read with feeling. Kids are full of feelings. But their reading is often empty. Sometimes, just telling them to read with feeling improves their expression. I can also model for kids by reading the same passage in a flat voice and then again in an expressive voice. The kids can hear the difference easily and they always say the expressive voice is better.

• Make your voice match the meaning. The first attempts kids make at putting emotion into their reading are often comical. They’ve got feelings, that’s for sure. Just not the same ones that show up in the text. Many kids will read in an excited voice even if the passage isn’t exciting. It’ll be a while before they can make their voices match the meaning. This is where I show kids the connection between expression and comprehension. To express a text well, I tell them, you have to understand it well.

• Follow the punctuation. I start by focusing on periods, commas, and quotation marks. Through choral reading, we practice taking a small pause at a comma and a full stop at a period. I also point out that our voices should dip down a bit at the end of a sentence (or up if we find a question mark). For dialog, I teach them a strategy I call “Character high, narrator low”. This describes how we change the pitch of our voices to distinguish between character and narrator.

• Emphasize important moments. This is hard but fun. In really good expressive reading, readers put extra “stuff” on certain words, phrases, and sentences. Sometimes this emphasis just involves holding a word out a little longer or saying it a little louder. At other times, especially in dialog, our expression takes on a more theatrical quality. This is where kids put the polish on their reading, and where we often discover our most inspiring results.

• Expression works even when you read silently. I can only teach expression by reading aloud to the kids. But I need them to know that expressive reading works for silent reading, too. Unless we’re using speed reading techniques, we all subvocalize when we read. With a little practice, we can become more aware of what that voice sounds like even to the point of recognizing when we’re using expression during silent reading. If I want kids to become expressive readers, I’ll have to make sure they practice. And much of that practice will come when they read silently to themselves.

Expression makes reading more fun. But it also makes reading more understandable. Think about watching an actor in a play, TV show, or movie. As members of the audience, we have just one chance to hear and comprehend each line that is spoken. So actors want to deliver their lines in the best way possible. Matching their emotions to the meaning of the words gives us extra information that reinforces what they want us to understand.

The same thing happens when we read with expression. By engaging our emotions as we read, we improve our understanding in two ways. When our feelings match the meaning exactly, our comprehension is reinforced, and even our memory is improved. When our emotions and our words get out of sync, the awkwardness we feel let’s us know we’re not getting something, and that a quick re-reading is in order.

By teaching expression explicitly through simple language and easy exercises kids can understand, we can bring this important part of reading into our classrooms—and into the reading lives of our kids. Expression is an essential element of reading. It enhances fluency, improves comprehension, and increases kids’ enjoyment of reading. It’s something every reader appreciates. After all, even a four year-old can tell when his uncle isn’t doing it right.

Comments

[Margot C. Lester]

this is just a test

[Margot C. Lester]

I like to link conventions reading with expressive reading and a little bit of phrasing. It ties all that stuff up into a neat little package. What has been the most successful technique you've used to help your kids read with more expression?