Capitals and ending punctuation.

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2002 : March : 9

Capitals and ending punctuation.
By Sharon D. Wilson-Larsen

I'm not sure where I read this (one of the mailrings I guess) but someone once mentioned to allow each studnet to "edit" with green and red pencils or markers/pens. They must re-read and circle all the "beginnings" of their
sentences with green - it means to GO! The sentences is starting. They must re-read their work for all ending punctuation and circle it. The red means to stop. If there is a mistake they must fix it before they can circle it in pen/marker. However remind them that this is only for rough drafts. Also be careful of other forms of punctuation besides the ? ! and the . For example

commas would not be circled as these don't mean to come to a full stop. And also talk about other times capitals are used for proper nouns. These do always mean a new "beginning".

I teach grade one and I use this once in a while for our morning message if we have extra time in the mornings. A few are getting the idea to start with uppercase letters but I'm still reminding most of them them about "starting" and "stopping" the sentence. We are doing sentence dictations 2-3 times a week mostly to practice our word wall words but I give one point for a capital to begin the sentence and a point for ending punctuation.

sdwl