Capitalization and Punctuation

   Capitalization and Punctuation

Firstgraders are responsible for properly using capitalization andpunctuation. Students should always capitalize the first letter of asentence and proper nouns. The students are also expected to be able touse appropriate punctuation. Our focus in first grade at this time isusage of the period and question mark. We will add the exclamation markand comma as the year progresses.

If your child isexperiencing struggles with either at this time please consider thesuggestions below to help him/her practice at home.

Sentence Correction - The student should rewrite each sentence using capitals and punctuation.

                  Example: the dog's name is snoopy
                                   how many days are in november

Thestudents are familiar with this type of activity. They have practicedtaking a sentence with no capitalization at the beginning and nocapitalization of names as well as missing punctuation and rewriting itwith the correct capitalization and punctuation.

Journal- Encourage your child to keep a journal. The student should write inthe journal two or three times each week. After the writing is completethe student should sit down with you, read the journal entry and talkabout where capitals, periods and question marks are needed. Thestudent should make those corrections. We have a list of question wordsposted in the classroom. The students know that if a sentence beginswith one of those words then a question mark should be used at the endof the sentence. Consider developing a list of question words with yourchild and posting it in the front of the journal for a quickreference. You will find a list of question words below to get youstarted.

Question Words
who, what, when, where, why, how, can, may, do, did, does, should, would, could, will, is, have, was