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Punctuation Takes a Vacation?!?

How many times a day do you remind your students to check for punctuation?

"Is that the end of your sentence?"

"What goes at the end of a sentence?"

"Do you need a punctuation mark?"

"Have you used your writing checklist?"

And so it goes. I often like to teach a mini-lesson where I read aloud a piece of writing that does not contain any punctuation marks. I read the entire piece without taking a breath and then fall over when I run out of air. This is a visual reminder to children, the importance of punctuation! And they think it's really silly!

However... the punctuation reminders never seem to end in my classroom!!!

Enter Robin Pulver and the Punctuation Takes a Vacation book.


The wonderfully talented children's author that focuses many of her books on grammar and the writing process! Punctuation Takes a Vacation is a fun, silly book that teaches children the importance of using punctuation in the writing process. The kids quickly catch on to the point that life without punctuation is a MESS! Check out how we used this book to remedy our problem!


To begin, I read the book Punctuation Takes a Vacation as our read-aloud for our mini lesson. I read the letter from Mr. Wright's class very dramatically, emphasizing each punctuation mark that was in the incorrect place. The kids loved it... and it really hit the point home of the importance of proper punctuation use!



Next, I did a demonstration on the SMARTboard of how to make edits and revisions to a writing piece, including punctuation with pages from the book.



After we completed the mini-lesson, the kids were put into groups to work collaboratively to solve each post-card from the book. They needed to figure out which punctuation mark wrote the letter and replace the missing marks! 



 The kids loved the challenge! They used a different color for each punctuation mark!


We were able to explicitly review the concept of the period, the comma, the question mark and the exclamation point!


Finally, the kiddos were sent off to write their own stories using the punctuation marks reviewed today! The writing paper had a checklist at the bottom to remind each child to, you guessed it, USE PUNCTUATION!


If you'd like this freebie, click on the picture above! Hope it can be helpful for you!



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