Pamela M. Fowler
Goal: TO IMPROVE GRAMMAR USAGE
The student will study and utilize capital letters, punctuation and quotation marks in this writing.
My students have minimal comprehension of grammar usage. They need to constantly be drilled, either by a teacher or on work sheets. As a supplement to this unit a series of ditto ideas and work has been added. Using the task board from the earlier lesson insert the four problem areas for the students, mine are; punctuation, capitalization, word usage and spelling.
The most success I have had in drills is from work they already know, their peers. Give a series of lessons that require writing a paragraph and have the class exchange papers and silently correct them. Focus on one area at a time.
Next take the themes that the students have already read rewrite them on a ditto and eliminate the punctuation, the capitals in another, etc. and have the student rewrite the paragraph correctly then hand it to another student to correct and still to another to re-edit, finally making the way back to the teacher for final editing and correcting. The paper returns to the owner for revision.
A final idea in drilling punctuation is to team up with another teacher and as her class writes your class corrects them and vice versa.
The students learn responsibility and the process of correcting and revising as well as the drill in grammar and language.