Punctuation Police

Today was my first day back to the classroom after being under the weather and out for two-and-a-half-days. I hesitated jumping back in, realizing I had a lot to catch-up on in my kids’ lives. However, after a fluid Morning Meeting, I decided to forge ahead with my lesson on PERIODS. (How exotic!)

I put one of my student’s Idea Notebook entries up on the document camera sans periods. (Well, it had one period at the very end, but reading it aloud left me breathless.) I pointed out that this entry was really strong — it had voice and elaboration and excellent word choice — but it lacked conventions… namely periods. I immediately presented a typed-up version of his entry, which I edited, where I thought the periods belonged (i.e., where they separated ideas, created pause, and made the writing clearer). Naturally, I received advanced permission from my student to do this. That being said, everyone in the class, including the writer, thought he writing made more sense with the periods. WHEW!

During the active engagement, the kids went back through their notebooks to find a good entry that had the spokes of the wheel, but lacked the rim to hold it together. Many of them, thankfully, offered up an entry that had some semblance of conventions.  Therefore, I didn’t put it up on the doc camera.  Two of my kids offered me period-less entries, of which I selected the shorter one to place on the doc camera and edit with my kids.  They took off with this and, together, we made the student’s good entry (i.e., it was a Slice of Life Story from the beginning of March) a great one.

I took my kids outisde to the playground for the independent part of Writing Workshop.  We all wrote together.  Right before they started writing, I found myself giving them full topic- and genre-choice, but asking them, “What are we all going to write with today?”  I expected to hear “PERIODS!”  Instead I heard “PUNCTUATION!”  I took it.

So what was my “Mid-Workshop Interruption?”  I reminder about new sentences, that is the letter after the ending punctuation, being upper case.  Once I finished my “All sentences start with a capital letter” diatribe, I found my way back to my spot on the deck in the playground wondering, “Have I become the Punctuation Police?”  I’d like to say no, but in reality, I have been  a bit nit-picky about conventions ever since I co-facilitated a p.d. on it earlier this month.  However, it’s really that important, because without proper conventions, one’s writing literally falls apart.