About this activity
Eight oral reading tasks where the student marks their own targets first: read a paragraph aloud and underline every target word before you start; read the same paragraph again and beat your own error count; read a news headline; read song lyrics aloud, spoken not sung; read a recipe's ingredient list; read a text conversation aloud, both sides; read your own writing aloud and mark the words you would rehearse.
How to use it in a session
Insist on the pre-marking. Underlining targets before reading is what turns oral reading from a fluency task into an articulation task, and a student who reads without marking is practising reading. The beat-your-own-count card is the engine — self-competition produces more repetitions than any instruction. Fifteen minutes covers two or three texts with the marking and the re-read.
What to listen for
Watch whether the student can identify their own targets accurately. A student who underlines half the target words in a paragraph has a perception gap, and that gap explains why the sound does not carry over. Notice the text conversation task, which is the closest thing here to spontaneous speech, since the register is casual and the sentences are short.
Carrying it home
Any text works — a recipe, a set of lyrics, a page of a book. Marking the target words first is the only instruction a family needs, and it takes a minute.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Sixth through twelfth, for residual articulation errors at the carryover stage.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight tasks are free to use with no account.
- Why have the student mark their own targets?
- Because identifying the targets is the skill. A student who cannot spot their own target words in a paragraph will not spot them in conversation, which is where carryover actually has to happen.