A guaranteed speed breaker when I enter a new school year, and meet a new batch of students with renewed enthusiasm is old errors. Do it enough over the years, and you might begin to realize that part of an old-timer’s stoicism in the face of annoying errors lies in foreseeing obstacles and being ready for them as opposed to being taken by surprise.
I’ve been teaching capitalization and end punctuation for 12 years. That’s also how long I’ve been teaching. Irrespective of age group and background, I now know that I will meet students every year who need to learn or relearn these basics. Being ready with my lesson, slides and resources ensures that I don’t meet wrong capitalization in drafts with irritation. I just do what needs to be done: teach, remind, reinforce, and remember not to turn the lack of capitalization and end punctuation into a student’s moral failing.
In this post, I share with you my lesson, slides and resources so you can be ready too when the time comes.
Mini-lesson slides in PDF:
Mini-lesson slides in editable PPTX:
Link: if you’d like to use my Google Slide animations as is.
I have found that the most reliable way to get students to capitalize correctly and consistently is to do what Nancie Atwell recommends:
- teach the mini-lesson
- add it to the proofreading list
- make proofreading second nature to your students
- proofread what your students missed
Sometimes, though, I have felt the need for targeted exercises that don’t fit in a mini-lesson such as the one above. It helps to have enough examples and exercises ready so I can reduce my cognitive load and provide sufficient practice for a few students who need it.
I am also very adamant about not recreating what already exists. I use exercises from books that are already thoughtfully made and cover as many cases for capitalization as possible. Here are some of those books in no particular order.
- Basics First: Capitalization and Punctuation series by Linda Hartley
- Capitalization and Punctuation: A Reproducible Workbook by Virginia Slachman
- Capitalization and Punctuation, Book C in the series on Programs for Individualized Instruction by Richard A. Boning
- Capital Letters and Endmarks by Sally Grimes Pasley and Dee Koppel Williams, for older students
- The Write On! series by Pam Scheunemann
- Names
- Days
- Places
- Months
- Developing Skills in Capitalization and Punctuation by Beverly Cory
- Capitalization & Punctuation Make Sense by Arlene G. Clarke and Marlene B. Clarke
If you use this lesson, do write to me in the comments or email me at teachingtenets@gmail.com. I’m excited to know how your class went.
For more of my writing, visit my Substack: https://teachingtenets.substack.com/
-Aishwarya
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