Break out the slide whistles, triangles, and tambourines. It's time for a punctuation lesson. This richly detailed plan is loaded with ideas and activities for using rhythm instruments to accent the punctuation in folk tales. A...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Let's eat kids. Let's eat, kids. Commas make a difference! Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation explains ways to teach the importance and use of conventions. Learners take part in...

Explore appositives, phrases that immediately follow the noun they modify, using sentence strips, examples, and collaborative learning. The class works together to identify appositives and use commas to properly punctuate them. Partners...

Quotation marks are the focus of this resource. In it, youngsters discover how to correctly use punctuation marks. It is meant to be carried out over a three-day period. You could shorten it, but I wouldn't. The activities are...

In this everyday editing activity, students correct grammatical mistakes in a short paragraph about the women in Henry VIII's life. The errors range in capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

As the unit on research writing draws to a close, class members continue to revise and edit their papers, this time focusing on grammar, spelling, and punctuation (colon and semicolon).

Don't let your pupils get bored with contractions! You've found a veritable squirrel-stash of activities right at your fingertips. This packet includes games, activities, and plenty of materials to support your lesson plans on...

A unit covering second-grade skills reviews 16 letter-sound correspondences, tricky words, and punctuation. Readers provide context for examining story elements, and pupils participate in close reading and write narratives retelling a...

Encourage young writers to edit text based on conventions. After reviewing the conventions, fourth graders watch a teacher demonstrate how to revise a paragraph for correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, or dialogue. Then, pairs...

Why should we read with expression when we read? Engage your learners in this discussion and teach them the easiest way to gauge expression: the end mark! Is it a question mark? An exclamation point? This helps you determine how to...

First through third graders observe and demonstrate a variety of reading expression strategies. First start by reviewing some common digraphs and the sounds they make. Then listen to the teacher read different sentences with and without...

Beginning readers observe and demonstrate a variety of reading expression strategies. They listen to the teacher read the book Ten Hungry Monsters both with and without expression, and discuss the difference. Then it's their turn!...

How do you make a story exciting? Teach young readers how to change your pitch, tone, and mood as you read. After modeling the various ways you can change your expression, have small pairs or groups work together to give it a shot! 

Young grammarians will go to town with a lesson that doodles with macaroni! Scholars cook up sentences with the addition of commas, which makes all the difference in their meaning.

Third graders develop their reading superpowers in a lesson plan on fluency. After first listening to an audio recording or teacher read aloud, the class works together identifying criteria for fluent reading, focusing on phrasing, rate,...

Young readers continue to strengthen their fluency skills with a text of their choosing. The teacher first engages the class with an audio recording or read-aloud of a short poem, modeling for children how to read fluently. Next it's...

Explore the history between Spain and the United States. Class members examine a copy of an original letter written in 1821 by Colonel Jose Coppinger in St. Augustine, Florida about the treaty that refers to the Florida territory that...

Six lessons comprise a unit about Roald Dahl's George's Marvelous Medicine. Over time, scholars explore themes such as the power of words, exciting writing, and mixed feelings. They examine the writing's literary devices, persuasive...

Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and a song from the musical "Hamilton" allow middle schoolers to practice using punctuation to indicate whether sentences are indicative, imperative, or interrogative. 

Two sonnets provide seventh graders with examples of Shakespearean sonnets. After discussing the story of the poems and analyzing their rhyme scheme and rhythm, young poets craft a Shakespearian sonnet and share their work with two...

Commas can be quite confusing. Young writers target troublesome grammar skills by focusing on the four most troubling uses: joining two independent clauses, separating introductory materials in a sentence, separating unnecessary...

Lisa Trumbauer's big book, Spinning a Web, provides kids with an opportunity to practice word sequencing, to use correct punctuation, and to develop comprehension skills with a cloze reading evercise.

It's no secret that children can be very opinionated, but rather than fight against this natural tendency, embrace it with this primary grade writing project. After a shared reading of a children's book about...