Hi Bobby,
This is a really common characteristic of young students and struggling readers, but you are right not to want to gloss over these errors. Even though these omissions, additions, or substitutions may seem innocuous and irrelevant to the text’s meaning, instilling the habits of reading precision now for your students will assuredly pay off down the road. We’ve all seen the examples like "Let’s eat, Grandma!" where the omission of a comma, or change of the stress of a word (often indicated by italics in printed language) can completely change the sentence’s meaning. Consider also how articles (e.g., a, the) can change the meaning of the following phrases:
She went to school. // She went to a school.
He’s in office. // He’s in the office.
She spoke of him. // She spoke for him.
And of course, a small word like no or the contraction < n’t > can completely reverse a text’s meaning as well. So we want to make sure students are carefully attuning to the text and its punctuation all of the time, so that they aren’t misunderstanding the times when these changes do really matter.
Oftentimes, these errors are caused by issues other than decoding or word-reading skills. Students who skip words (or even entire lines of text) often lack self-monitoring skills. Similar to feedback that a teacher might provide when a student misreads a word, you might repeat the misread phrase for the student. “Hmmm, you just said ‘Marco was going ride his bike.’ Does that sound right to you? Me neither. Why don't you try that again, being really careful to read each and every word?" By providing this correction, we help build this internal monitoring to make sure that the student is making sense of what they are reading more so than if we had given them more direct feedback such as “You missed the word to.”
It’s worth noting that if these types of errors persist even when a student is reading slowly and carefully, there may be more going on than just attention or monitoring. Difficulty consistently attending to small function words might point to gaps in language (i.e., syntactic awareness) or automatic word recognition. In those cases, additional practice with sentence-level work, such as noticing how small words function within phrases, can be helpful alongside fluency work.
Ensuring that the text makes sense is not sufficient, however, as this is not synonymous with also making sure the student is matching the text exactly. In addition to building this internal monitoring, we need to explicitly support students in attending to every word and punctuation mark on the page. Simple supports like having the student use a finger or pointer to track each word can help anchor their attention to the print. You might also cue the student to slow down their reading rate and reframe any notion that faster is better. Setting up the task with a clear goal can also be effective. For example, asking the student to reread a short passage with the specific purpose of “making your voice match every word you see” helps shift their focus from general understanding to precise reading.
It can be helpful to build this focus on accuracy into regular reading practice, rather than only addressing it when errors occur. Short, repeated readings of text can be especially effective when paired with a specific goal, such as reading an excerpt exactly as written. This helps students internalize that fluent reading is not just about sounding smooth, but about being precise.
Over time, these small adjustments help students internalize the habit of checking both meaning and accuracy, leading to more careful and controlled reading!
