Thought groups
Introducing thought groups
Fast talker: To show students why thought groups are
necessary, take a deep breath and start talking or reading
aloud without pausing until you run out of breath. It doesn’t
matter what you say; just keep talking. Ask the students if it
was easy to understand you. Then start speaking again, but a
bit slower and with normal pauses. Ask the students why the
second way was easier to understand. They’ll surely remark
on the di"erence that pauses make. This helps students see
how di#cult it is to understand a speaker who doesn’t divide
words into thought groups.
Listening to thought groups
Mark the pauses: Have students listen to a story, dialog, or
paragraph while following along with a written script. Ask
them to draw slash marks or other symbols to show the
pauses that divide thought groups. For an easy start, write
the story with normal punctuation. (Punctuation often occurs
where thought groups are divided.) To make the activity
more challenging, print the story without punctuation. Have
students listen again and mark the pauses they hear. After
some practice, students can be asked to predict on their own
where pauses should be. Then have them read the story aloud
with appropriate division into thought groups.
Practicing thought groups
Hand gestures: Have students read or recite a dialog or
story, using a “chopping” hand gesture to indicate the pauses
that divide sentences into thought groups, or have students
wave their hands to show thought groups—up at the
beginning of a thought group and down at the end.Red card, yellow card: Give
each student two small cards or
pieces of paper, one red and one
yellow. Ask them what the colors
remind them of. Some students
might think of red and yellow
tra#c lights: Red means stop, and
yellow means slow down. Others might think of penalty cards
used in soccer games: Yellow for a warning and red when a
player is sent out of the game. Either analogy will work. The
idea is that the yellow card represents a short pause (for
example, between clauses), and the red one represents a
longer pause (usually at the end of a sentence).As students read a story or dialog aloud, have them hold up
the yellow card to show a partial pause and a red card to
show a complete stop. Here’s an example of a joke that works
well for this:164