It can be really
hard to fit everything in to our ELA instruction. Often, it’s language and grammar that gets
left out, but these are important skills that our students need in order to
become truly literate. One way to fit these sills in is to work them
into our read aloud time.
Here are some
quick ways to add some language and grammar to your read aloud:
When students all
have a copy of the text:
-look at verb
tenses in a paragraph or across a story line
-ask: what does
this possessive mean? (and have students look at how it’s spelled)
-point out
singular and plural nouns and look at their spellings
-highlight all of
the conjunctions
-point out various
parts of speech
-look at how the
author uses capitalization
-look at
punctuation: commas, quotes, apostrophes
-look at how the
author uses commas- especially for making lists and using clauses
-look at how the
author uses punctuation for quotation marks
-look at spelling
changes (for example, ‘happiness’ comes from ‘happy,’ and we change the ‘y’ to
an ‘i’ before adding the ending)
-look at spelling
patterns- especially in multisyllabic words
-use the glossary
to help understand the meanings of words and how to pronounce them
-discuss
homographs, what they mean, and how you know which way to pronounce them
-find and discuss prepositional
phrases in the text
-look carefully frequently
confused words (to/two/too, etc.)
-identify
conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections and look at how they are used in
the text
-look for patterns
in verb tenses across the chapter or story
-choose several sentences
and rewrite them by condensing or expanding them (this is also a good lead-in
to a writing lesson)
If you only have
one copy of the text being read aloud:
-make a word web
for abstract nouns that are important to the text
-ask: what does
this particular pronoun mean/ refer to?
-pick out simple,
compound, complex sentences and discuss how they function in the text
-point out relative
pronouns (whose, whom, etc.) as you read aloud
-look at modal
verbs (can, should, must) and how they affect the meaning of the text
-point out
examples of run-on sentences and sentence fragments and how the author uses
them for effect
-discuss how the
author chooses words & phrases for effect
-look at spoken
language when the characters are speaking, and compare and contrast it with the
narrative text
-use context clues
to figure out the meanings of words or phrases
-use roots/
affixes to figure out the meanings of words or phrases
-use dictionaries
to look up words and discuss their meanings in the context of the read aloud
-discuss figurative
language
-list literal and nonliteral
language
-look at shades of
meanings for different words
-analyze similies
and metaphors
-look carefully at
words that have multiple-meanings
-discuss idioms,
adages, and proverbs
-point out
synonyms and antonyms and how they relate to each other
-compare and
contrast varieties and styles of English
-point out
examples of either/ or and neither/nor and what they mean in the context of the
book
Christine Cadalzo
