Notice the punctuation...

We've spent a lot of time this week thinking about punctuation in our reading and writing. In reading, we added a new strategy to our CAFE board, under F for Fluency--Notice the punctuation. We are more fluent readers when we notice the punctuation and make our reading sound like the author wants it to sound. So far, we've talked about periods, question marks, exclamation points, and quotation marks. We've also been doing a lot of thinking about how we should use punctuation in our writing to help our readers. The focus has been beginning a sentence with an uppercase letter and ending with a period, exclamation point, or question mark. I hope that you notice your students noticing punctuation when they read to you and when writing. In the classroom, students seem to be noticing it everywhere! 

At sharing circle during Reading Workshop--showing how we should change our voice when we see bold print and an exclamation point.

Students found and circled marks of punctuation on our thank you letter to the fire fighters (we used a clear sheet of plastic over the letter so it wouldn't have marks on it when we mail it!).  

Thinking about where to put uppercase letters and end punctuation in Miss Dube's writing at Writing Workshop.

Students unscrambled sentences in groups and underlined the first word of the sentence (the one that needs to begin with an uppercase letter) and circled the end punctuation--this was during SWR time.