Hearing Punctuation for Writing

Before students write using punctuation marks purposefully, they need to see the power of them within their reading. Students tend to read right through punctuation marks, never stopping, pausing, or taking a breath. If students don't adjust their voices to "read" punctuation marks, they will omit them from their writing, too. Here are several ways to first target punctuation within your reading.

• Begin pointing out what happens to the reader’s voice when it hits a mark in the reading. The voice stops at periods. The voice goes up at question marks. The voice gets louder at exclamation points. The voice pauses at commas. View a chart of punctuation marks and their effects on the reader’s voice.
• Break the class into two groups and read aloud the picture book Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka. The entire story is written in a series of short sentences with powerful punctuation marks. Let the students practice reading and manipulating their voices.
• Deborah Bennett, sixth grade teacher at Jerry Ross Elementary (Crown Point, IN), took the words from the Yo! Yes? picture book and put them in alphabetical order. She asked the students to create their own storyline using the same words, paying close attention to the punctuation marks they chose. Print the list of words.
• Using the alphabet, have students create a series of "alphabet passages" utilizing different punctuation marks. Download a couple of examples.
• At the end of every sentence, have students clap when they hear the reader take a breath, indicating there should be a period. I call this Punctuation Clapabout. First grade teacher Nancy Young at Royerton Elementary (Muncie, IN) added an additional component to this lesson. She explained, “Since we also teach exclamation points and question marks, we clap and immediately lift our hands in the air when the sentence ends in either one of these to show that our voices go UP at the end of these sentences! If we read a sentence without punctuation we say “UH OH” and quickly decide which form of punctuation we want to use.”