Teacher notes for this lesson. Two sides of A4, not for pupils.Mild sheetMedium sheetSpicy sheetAnswers
Teacher notes · not for pupils Reading sequence

Say It With Feeling

Fluency and prosody: reading aloud with expression

Lesson 2 of 4
Year 3 45 min

Objective

Read a range of texts aloud with fluency, using punctuation, phrasing, stress and volume to convey meaning and mood to a listener.

Board title: Reading with expression  ·  Say it: “Today we're letting the punctuation boss our voices about, a breath at a comma, a lift at a question mark, so the listener hears exactly what we mean.”

Curriculum

  • Y3: prepare poems and play scripts to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action
  • Y3: read a range of texts with increasing fluency, at a pace that allows comprehension
  • Y2: read aloud with intonation that makes the meaning clear (revisited)
  • Terminology: comma · full stop · question mark · exclamation mark · phrase

Success criteria

  • breathe at a comma and stop at a full stop
  • lift my voice at the end of a question
  • read in phrases instead of one word at a time
  • change my voice to match the mood

Key vocabulary

fluency · expression · phrase · pause · stress · mood · volume

Run of the lesson

5 min
Starter: read Would you like a slice of cake? twice, flat and fast, then warm with the lift. Ask which one they would answer. Don't explain it yet.
9 min
Model with the café, badly on purpose first, then well, marking the breaths on the board with a | as you go. A comma is a breath, not a full stop, the voice keeps going up. The question-mark lift is the one they lose: model it three times on Are we nearly at the seaside yet? and have them echo you.
9 min
Reading Rush on the whiteboard, Medium band. Name the mood, one child reads, the class echoes. Spend the time on level 2, the expression set, Shh, the baby is fast asleep against Wow, what a wonderful, sunny day!; level 3's two-clause sentences are where the phrasing bites.
4 min
Name racing plainly: a reader nobody can follow has not read. Then the vote pairs, read both options aloud yourself, a child says WHY before each reveal (answers: a-left, b-right, c-right, d-left).
15 min
Worksheet, independent. Task 3 is marking up and rehearsing, expect noise, circulate and listen. On Medium warn them the Task 2 commas are already right, it is the end marks that need fixing; listen for readers dropping their voice at the end of a question.
3 min
Plenary: two children perform their marked-up Task 3 passage, the class names the mood. Then the class quiz: what went wrong when Polpetta read the whole page in twenty seconds?
On screenSPAGhetti → Reading Rush → Medium. One screen only; no pupil devices needed. Each item carries a mood, calm, question, excited, whisper, proud, and that mood is the discussion, not the score. Medium level 2 is the expression set and the one to spend time on: Shh, the baby is fast asleep against Wow, what a wonderful, sunny day makes the volume point in ten seconds. Level 3 is two-clause sentences, which is where the phrasing work starts to bite.
SPAGhetti · Reading sequence · Lesson 2 of 4  ·  Teacher notes 1 of 2
Teacher notes · not for pupils Say It With Feeling · side 2

On the day

If the tech failsSkip the game entirely. Task 1 is the same content on paper, read both versions aloud and vote with thumbs. Better still, read a paragraph of the class novel yourself, badly, and let them tell you what you did wrong.
If they're on devicesLesson code READC (on the worksheet footer) opens the right game, locks the café until 10 items are done, then unlocks it as the reward.

Misconceptions to watch for

Fluency mistaken for speed. They race, finish first, and remember nothing. Some have been rewarded for words-per-minute for years. Time them reading a passage well instead, and judge it by whether a listener could follow.

Punctuation read as decoration. They run straight through full stops, or drop the voice fully at every comma so a long sentence arrives in pieces. Name each mark as an instruction: breath, stop, lift, louder.

Word-by-word reading. A tiny pause after every single word, so no phrase ever forms. Scoop under phrases with a pencil and have them read one scoop per breath. Two or three sessions of scooping usually shifts it.

Expression as performance. A silly voice for every line whatever the mood, or a dropped voice at the end of a question because that is how sentences end. Ask what the character actually feels, then match the voice to that.

The three sheets

Same four tasks on every sheet, in the same order, with the same look. Only the demand changes. Print the one each child needs; nobody does two.

Mild

Same four tasks as every other sheet, same order, same look, the demand is lower, not the dignity. Shorter passage in Task 2, and in Task 3 a word bank or words to tick, with printed sentence starters. Give it to anyone who needs a way in, and expect them to move up.

Medium

The core sheet. Give this to most of the class. No word bank; Task 3 is written from a cold start.

Spicy

Same four tasks, more demand, a longer passage with a subtler error, and Task 3 asks for two things at once. Not extra work; harder work. Nobody should be doing Spicy and the Medium sheet.

Adaptive teaching

  • Support: shorter passage, pre-marked by you. They rehearse one sentence until it is genuinely good, then perform that.
  • SEN: gentle mode on; echo reading first, you then them, before any independent attempt.
  • Stretch: Task 3 extension, mark the same passage twice for two different moods and read both.
  • EAL: intonation patterns differ by language, a rising question is not universal. Model the lift explicitly and let them hear their own recording.

Play it

Lesson code READC at playspaghetti.com. The code is printed on the bottom of every pupil sheet with a QR, and Class Quiz in your dashboard opens the plenary quiz for this lesson pre-picked.

SPAGhetti · Reading sequence · Lesson 2 of 4  ·  Teacher notes, not for pupils 2 of 2  ·  Ludora