Monday, May 18, 2009

Explain the exclamation mark!

This activity will boost your child's reading in five seconds.

One of the most exciting things about reading is the exclamation mark.

The other day, I was reading a book to a couple of kids in a kindergarten class. When I got to a sentence with an exclamation mark, I stopped and pointed it out.

I told them that whenever they see one, they're to say the sentence in a really excited voice.

We practiced the sentence in a normal voice, and an excited voice. They caught on right away.

Now when they're reading aloud, the sentences with exclamation marks (and there are a lot of them in children's books) are going to sound really exciting! And so they should.

This is a really fun thing to teach your child, and it will boost her out-loud reading from monotone to interesting in about five seconds. And that will make reading more exciting for her.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the exclamation mark.
I always have.

(Actually, this entry reminded me of that old Victor Borge Phonetic Punctuation routine!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane; in fact, I'm off to YouTube to view Phonetic Punctuation!)

Joyce Grant said...

It's a classic!
Here's a link to the famous Victor Borge routine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4qii8S3gw

And here's one with Victor Borge and Dean Martin, singing his famous phonetic punctuation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7L02tCNi0I
If you can't watch the whole thing, skip to about 4 minutes when it really gets going.

-Joyce.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link to the Victor & Dean routine!

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