Six pupils were selected at random from each of grades one through eight in a single school and were asked to write a rough draft of any length on any topic of interest to them. The 48 resulting essays were analyzed for errors in punctuation and sentence structure. Results indicated that elementary school children have difficulty in placing…

A fifth grader wanted to know what he had to do to get all his ideas the way he wanted them in his story writing "and" have the spelling, punctuation and quotation marks correctly styled. His teacher encouraged him to think about writing as a process and provided the student with three steps as guidelines for effective writing. (Author/RK)

Curriculum-based measures of written expression have traditionally used total words written or correct word sequences as indices of students' skill levels. This investigation attempted to determine whether additional hand-scored and computer-scored measures might share more variance with the criterion measures. The new measure, correct punctuation…

Offers a step-by-step guide to teaching elementary school children conventions such as punctuation, spelling, and grammar and includes a sample minilesson and 10 tips for teachers. An interview with author Donald Graves answers questions about teaching writing. (SM)

Written for the third- and fourth-grade levels, this workbook gives students practice in using context clues and reading comprehension to apply punctuation rules, as well as in carefully reading and following directions. Noting that the activities are based on the idea that punctuation is necessary to make written communication clear, the…

This workbook is designed as an introduction to the "Editor in Chief" series, which reinforces the rules of written English. In this workbook, student first review the rules of grammar and mechanics using multiple-choice questions; then the students learn to apply these rules in context by editing stories in a variety of formats. This "Beginning"…

A comparative study of students' scores in mechanics and usage on standardized tests and ratings of actual writing samples. (DD)

This software product is designed to teach punctuation to students aged 8 to 14 years. The software may be used without the printed text, but educators will appreciate the added dimension and greater convenience that the lesson plans provide. Along with the 12 lesson plans are worksheets, templates, and other materials needed to complete the…

Finds that the proportion of sentence fragments remained fairly consistent across grade levels, with older students making more errors with more complex syntactic structures as they began to elaborate on ideas and use more subordinate elements. (RL)

Intended for use by students at any level above grade 3, this practice book helps students use the parts of speech correctly in speaking and writing. The book reviews (1) the kinds of sentences; (2) the use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in sentences; (3) capitalization and punctuation; and (4) proofreading. The book is…

This computer program offers comprehensive English lessons for grades 3-4, focusing on usage and punctuation. Lessons are targeted to specific skills, and children earn tokens to play eight logic and action games. The program features imaginative graphics; teacher-approved, step-by-step lessons; individualized instruction tailored to the student's…

An elementary school unit on punctuation skills is divided into nine sections. Section 1 contains a pretest which is repeated in section 9 as a posttest. Section 2 consists of a series of punctuation mark caricatures to put on the classroom bulletin board. Sections 3 through 7 contain material on the following topics: end of sentence punctuation,…

A computer-assisted analysis was conducted of the punctuation skills taught in nine series of language arts textbooks. Each text was subjected to a detailed, page-by-page analysis of instructional content, resulting in a content-specific analysis of punctuation instruction at each grade level. The results indicated significant differences among…

Ideas for incorporating five essential writing skills, identified by the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills, into elementary social studies courses are presented. These include spelling, organizing ideas in writing, a knowledge of standard punctuation and capitalization, ability to control sentence structure, and use of legible handwriting for…

This guide provides an evaluation system by which a teacher or parent can follow a child's progress in sentence structure, usage, punctuation, capitalization, penmanship, and composition from kindergarten through grade eight. Each page lists an objective that is coded so that it is possible to correlate related materials, such as test items,…