No Caps or Punctuation
Comparing Two Pieces of Writing (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 2: Consolidation / FluencyStage 3: Literacy for Growth
Ages:
7-10
Grade Range:
2nd 3rd 4thFood Groups:
Primary: Writing Conventions
Transcript
This idea came out of a lot of frustration I was feeling at the beginning of the year with the students. Many of the children had forgotten over the summer about using capitals, periods, and spaces in their writing. So one day I had the idea that I would write a story about the children in the class, so the story has everybody's name in it. And I passed it out to the children, but I typed it up, for example you can see up here, it had no capitals, no periods, and no spaces. I didn't tell the children this of course. So then we said, Let's read this all together. And of course the children were having a lot of trouble and were looking around with concerned faces. And I said, What's wrong? And they said, There aren't any capitals, or periods, or spaces. So we had a lovely discussion about why its so important to have punctuation and spaces, giving the words the room to breathe so that we can read it. And its not just you reading it, but someone else will be reading your work. So, then I gave them a copy of this story with the proper punctuation and spaces in it. And they realized how much better it was and how much easier it was to read. One of the children, very cleverly said aloud to everyone, I don't want to live in a world without capitals, periods, and spaces. And so I put the page up here as a silent reminder to the children, not to forget to do those things when they're writing.
Related References
Activity Objective
The goal of No Caps or Punctuation: Comparing Two Pieces of Writing (Virtual Tour) is to help students develop an understanding of the importance of writing conventions to reading.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Emphasize the differences between editing and revising where editing is making changes to spelling, grammar and basic sentence structure. Revising writing occurs when details are added, words are changed or sentences are moved. - Discuss the importance of including proper punctuation and capitalization on a regular basis will help the students become more familiar with writing conventions. - Create a checklist for students to refer to when making revisions and editing their work. Display this checklist in the classroom for the students to use as a guide during writing tasks.
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