On September 24th, join schools and businesses across the nation in celebrating National Punctuation Day. Check out the National Punctuation Day website for resources and ideas. Then, try some (or all!) of the activities described below to "mark" this important day!
Note: You may want to celebrate over the course of a week, focusing on only a few marks each day: period and comma; exclamation point and question mark; quotation marks and parentheses; colon and semicolon; and apostrophe, ellipsis, dash, and hyphen.
Students Will:
- Name different punctuation marks.
- Identify ways each punctuation mark can be used.
- Use punctuation clues to read texts aloud fluently and with expression.
- Use different punctuation marks correctly in their writing.
- Participate in fun, punctuation-related activities, including inventing a new punctuation mark!
Lesson Focus: Why Do People Use Punctuation?
Ask children why we need punctuation. Read aloud the picture book Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver [Holiday House, 2003]. Note how text runs together without the help of punctuation. Or, provide children with a paragraph of text from which you have removed all punctuation and have them try to read it. Discuss how punctuation marks are needed to clarify the meaning of what someone has written.
Introduce Punctuation Marks
- The Perfect Pop-Up Punctuation Book by Kate Petty [Dutton Children's Books, 2006] is a great resource for introducing punctuation marks and their use. It includes rules for using each mark, along with flip-up panels, pull-tags, and pop-ups that mix funny text and illustrations to present each mark being used in context.
- Read aloud a picture book that contains punctuation mark characters. The illustrations will teach children what each mark looks like, and the personalities and actions of the characters will help children understand how each mark is used. For example, exclamation points might shout all their dialogue. Try Punctuation Takes a Vacation, Alfie the Apostrophe by Moira Rose Donohue [Scholastic Inc., 2006], or Penny and the Punctuation Bee by Moira Rose Donohue [Albert Whitman & Company, 2008].
Punctuation Mark Activities for Practice and Assessment
- Build Reading Fluency: Use Punctuation Clues: Read text aloud, using punctuation clues to model when to pause or stop and how to read with expression. Have children echo-read after you. Use sentences from the picture books mentioned previously or the picture book version of Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss [G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2006] and/or The Girl's Like Spaghetti by Lynne Truss [G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007].
- Build Writing Skills: Write a Story: Have children write a correctly punctuated story about punctuation mark characters.
- Spot and Fix Punctuation Errors: Share examples of incorrect punctuation use, such as the letter the children write in Punctuation Takes a Vacation or age-appropriate signs from the National Punctuation Day website (check the Photos From Our Visitors page and follow the link on the Resources page to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks). Help children spot and fix the errors.
- Solve Punctuation Mysteries: Have children identify which punctuation marks wrote which postcards in Punctuation Takes a Vacation.
- Hold a Punctuation Talent Show: Have children perform a talent show act in character as a punctuation mark, just like in Alfie the Apostrophe.
- Hold a Punctuation Bee: Assign each child a punctuation mark and hold your own punctuation bee, just like in Penny and the Punctuation Bee.
- Invent Punctuation Hand Signs: Teach children the hand sign for air quotes. Challenge them to come up with hand signs for other punctuation marks. Then, have then read aloud a piece of text and sign each punctuation mark as they come to it.
- Invent a New Punctuation Mark: Tell children about the interrobang. Challenge them to invent and demonstrate the use of another "new" punctuation mark.
To wrap up, visit www.moirarosedonohue.net, the website of the author of Alfie the Apostrophe and Penny and the Punctuation Bee, for some fun online punctuation-related games.
By making punctuation fun and relevant, you will encourage students to focus more carefully on using punctuation marks correctly whenever they write and read text. National Punctuation Day can be the starting point for a future of positive experiences with punctuation.
Renee Carver - Renée Carver has an Elementary Education degree and over ten years of experience writing and editing children's educational products.
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