P is also for…. Punctuation

PPunctuation is important. It helps people to understand what you want to say.

There are lots of different punctuation marks and your teacher will show you how they are used, but at the very least you need to use full stops.

A full stop goes at the end of a sentence. Sometimes it’s tricky to know where the end of your sentence is, but read what you have written, and if it has a verb and it makes sense on its own then it’s a sentence. If in doubt, ask your teacher to show you.

Have a look at this passage and try to work out what is going on.

I took my dog for a walk with my friend yesterday he was late because he had to help his mom wash up before he left the house she didn’t know he was meeting me so she made him dry up too he forgot to tell her so she never found out in time we walked for miles we got blisters on our feet and achy legs when we stopped we had some biscuits when Rover finished eating his he licked my hand

It’s hard to understand, isn’t it? Have a go at putting some full stops in, and you will see how much more sense it makes.

Related posts: O is also for….  Q is also for…..

Why Do They Do That?

It’s a question I’ve often asked myself when I’ve read children’s work and seen capital letters in the middle of sentences; lines and lines of writing without a full stop, and then a random one placed for no apparent reason; and exclamation marks in the middle of instructions.  So why do they do that?  For the last two years I have been lucky enough to be contracted for 1-2-1 tuition with a number of children. By working so closely with them I have gained an insight into how their minds work when they are writing, and some of life’s great mysteries have been revealed.

Let’s start with capitalisation in the middle of sentences. What’s that all about then? “Miss told us that names have to start with capital letters,” they told me when I asked. And “apple” is the name of a fruit, and “oak” is the name of a tree. Unfortunately, somewhere down the school they were also told that nouns are naming words (yes, I know, I think I’ve been guilty of that one as well), so now every noun has a capital letter.

How about full stops?  I’ve been that teacher that nags the class “Don’t forget to put full stops at the end of every sentence!” and I know I’m not the only one. When I’ve asked the children I’ve been tutoring what they know about full stops, they happily parrot, “You have to put one at the end of every sentence.” They know. So why don’t they do it? Because it seems, a lot of children have no idea what a sentence is. So they just keep on writing till they have no more ideas, and then put a full stop. Then when they think of a new idea, they start a new sentence.

What about those exclamation marks that appear at the end of sentences such as, “First, take the bread out of the packet! Next, get the butter out of the fridge!”? I was baffled when I first asked a child, whose writing target was to use exclamation marks correctly, when he thought he should use them and he told me that you had to use them every time you were telling somebody how to do something. It seems he thought it was called an explanation mark! And he’s not alone. I’ve tutored 3 children of different ages from different schools who all thought the same things, so it’s obviously a fairly common misconception.

All these things are really easy to correct when you have time to work one-to-one with the children – but not so easy when you have 29 other children needing your attention, because no matter how much you want to you just don’t have time to spend half an hour with one child. That’s why I really love my job.