Fluncy Boot Camp Analysis

Fluency Boot Camp, Week Two: Phrasing

What is Fluency in Literacy? There are many dimensions of fluency, last week we discussed PACE, this week we will preview PHRASING.

Fluency in reading and writing involves many steps that can be taught at home or in the classroom. An activity that involves cut-up sentences into phrases is a productive activity for children who are having difficulty with reading fluency. When reading continuous print, children seem to forget what they know. It is quite common that they forget, in the moment, about the letters, sounds and words they already learned. When we test in isolation, most students seem to know letter-sound relationships, phonograms, or high-frequency words; however a reader is required to use both

pauses and intonation to parse sentences into meaningful phrases. This processing element can become a fluency challenge for all readers!

What is a phrase? In order to understand punctuation, which we will address next week in Fluency Boot Camp, but a phrase is a collection of words that may have nouns or verbs, but it is absent a subject. Example: leaving behind the dog.

Learn to recognize a phrase when you see one! A phrase is a group of words acting as a single part of speech and not containing both a subject and a verb. It is a part of a sentence, and does not express a complete thought. A phrase is two or more words that do not contain the subject-verb pair necessary to form a clause. Phrases can be very short or quite long. Here are two examples:

After lunch - - short phrase

After slithering down the stairs and across the road to scare nearly to death Mrs. Philpot busy pruning her rose bushes - - long phrase

In order to practice fluency by breaking-up the sentence phrases, simply choose an activity that involves cutting-up the sentences. Use the cut-up sentences, divided into phrased parts, to will help a reader to read the sentences. While practicing, the reader will gradually sound natural, as in talking, but one must first recognize a long phrase is not suggested for practicing fluency. Choose a sentence from a book, instead of asking students to begin their practice by writing the sentences themselves, instead model and teach how to recognize a PHRASE.

One example used in the classroom is called: Scoop the Pelican. Students practice writing 5 sentences on the strips provided, which are about one inch by eleven or thirteen inches. This activity is just ONE way to practice PHRASING; however, students may not understand what sentence to write, and they will notoriously write one that does not include enough words, or they will write a long phrase! In the sentence: The dog barked loudly at the mailman, the student would break-apart the sentence into PHRASES as follows: The dog / barked loudly / at the mailman. //

In the beginning, have prepared sentences ready that are appropriate to the child’s current language and word-solving understandings. Model the activity first by having the child read the sentence as you cut them into phrases. Then, mix-up the phrases, being sure that all phrases are in front of the child right side up and correctly oriented. Finally, ask the child to reconstruct the sentence while reading each phrase and rereading often from the beginning. At first, you may want to have the child check the reconstruction with a model.

Here are some examples of noun phrases, which include a noun (person, place or thing) and the modifiers that distinguish it. Here are three examples of noun phrases which function as subjects, objects and complements:

• The shoplifted pair of jeans

• A cat that refused to meow

• A great English teacher

In the examples below, the noun phrases will become complete sentences.

• The shoplifted pair of jeans caused Nathaniel so much guilt that he couldn’t wear them.

• Jerome adopted a cat that refused to meow.

• With her love of Shakespeare and knowledge of grammar, Jasmine will someday be a great English teacher.

Sometimes a sentence can communicate its meaning with a one-word verb. Other times; however, a sentence will use a verb phrase, a multi-word verb, to express more nuanced action or condition.

Here are some examples of verb phrases, which include a noun (person, place or thing) and the modifiers that distinguish it.

• Had cleaned

• Should have been writing

• Must wash

Here are the verb phrases in action:

• Mom had just cleaned the refrigerator shelves when Lawrence knocked over the pitcher of orange juice.

• Sarah should have been writing her research essay, but she couldn’t resist another short chapter in her Stephen King novel.

• If guests are coming for dinner, we must wash our smelly dog!

According to the research from Pinnel & Fountes, When Readers Struggle Teaching That Works, reassembling a cut-up sentence by breaking-up the phrases helps to improve fluency because it requires learners to:

• Keep the whole sentence in their head
• Attend to the order of words/phrases in sentences
• Search for and use visual information, while thinking about letter/sound relationships
• Check by rereading
• Use known words to monitor reconstruction and rereading

Students can practice phrasing, as an activity at home or in the classroom. Children benefit in their learning of fluency, when they are able to self-monitor. So, in order to synthesize the activity completely, they must first understand how to recognize a noun and verb

phrase.

Practice PHRASING, in the moment, when reading to your child.

I suggest introducing the concept of PHRASING as a whole group, before asking students to independently practice through a variety of activities.

Children are usually engaged when they are read a story. Reading out-loud is an excellent opportunity to practice PHRASING. Ask students to think about the PHRASES, for example in the sentence below:

Playing for time, I circled the van, closing in slowly, and finally saying, “Come out now, or we are coming in after you!”

Here is how this sentence would be PHRASED: pause after time, van, slowly, saying, now, and possibly after are and in.

Playing for time / I circled the van / closing in slowly / and finally saying / Come out now / or we are / coming in after you! / /

Practice how to PHRASE as a group, during a large group read aloud, so that students begin to understand that PHRASING is the placement and length of the reader’s pauses parse the language into meaningful units. This kind of pausing goes beyond acknowledging the punctuation. In good reading, the pauses are logically and well paced; in oral reading, they help the

listener.

As teachers, and parents use a lot of modeling to emphasize how this is done, try not to be too critical when kids are reading to out-loud. Sometimes parents, even teachers over-emphasize, with repetition, how it is done. When there is too much teacher talk and parent talk, children are made to feel like they are constantly getting it wrong. It isn’t easy using processing systems with automaticity for the typically developing child, but even more difficult for the special needs student.

The goal is to improve fluency by blending words together into meaningful PHRASES, and not reading one word at a time, and that is what PHRASING is all about. The more relaxed children are then they will improve with reading fluency. Gradually and with patience, children will perform reading motor actions rapidly, easily, and without conscious attention!