Reading with expression

 Like most teachers, I love to read!  I love teaching children to read!  So, obviously I love reading books to children.  One of the reasons I love reading to them is because I get to add voice to each character.  One of my favorite voices to read in is my Junie B. voice.  I wanted my students to incorporate voice in to their reading so I made a voice jar for my first grade classroom.  I introduced the "Voice Jar" through poetry since students must be fluent with a book or passage to use voice.  Our weekly class poems are at a level that everyone can read.  We read them over and over and over.  Students become very fluent at reading these poems.  To use the Voice Jar, I would have a student draw a voice card from the jar.  The class had to read the poem in whichever voice was chosen.  They LOVED this activity.  When I felt comfortable that students could do this on their own I put the Voice Jar in my fluency workstation.  It is a favorite activity of all students.  You can get my Voice Jar FREE at my TpT store or my TN store.  I hope your students will enjoy it as much as my students!!