Mooooving the Reader with Feelings

How many times have we heard a child read word by word without any feeling?  Reading with expression and understanding character feelings is what the first graders have been working on in the library and in class.  While reading Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore, in the library, the students had to analyze the character’s facial expressions, body language and context clues given by the author to determine how the character was feeling in the story.  The main character went from feeling sad and alone to happy and loved.

 

Once you understand how a character feels, it is time to add those emotions to your reading voice.  What better book to demonstrate this with other than Moo! by David LaRochelle.  During the first reading of this story, the students did not see the pictures and the words were read without any feeling. Since every word in the book is “Moo” the students soon figured out that using expression while reading gives meaning to the story.  The pictures support text features such as bolded letters, font sizes, capitalization and punctuation.

 

Experience for yourself how much meaning can be extracted from just the expressive way a story is read!

 

For more information on Moo as well as teacher guides and activities visit David LaRochelle’s website.