How to Teach Punctuation to Children

Teaching a child can be a difficult task. You must get into the basics to make their concepts clear. While a child usually learns to read and write at a relatively fast speed, learning punctuations can be a little dicey affair. It can be confusing and studying and teaching is no a small task. However, when taught with patience, you can make them understand the difference of each of the punctuation, which has its own importance adding value to the line said. By engaging in funny and interactive learn plans, you can make the learning session interactive as well as informative. Before teaching the child punctuation, you need to teach them the meaning of each one of them. This brings out results that are more productive and helps in alleviating stress and anxiety. In the following lines, we have provided some tips that will help you in teaching punctuation kids. Read on and make learning and teaching a great experience.

How to Teach Punctuation to Children

The best way to make your child learn the art of punctuations is to make him/her read the sentence aloud. By reading aloud, the child can learn faster and can understand better.
A comma is used when we want to take a pause in a sentence. You can use short sentence to emphasize its importance. A sentence like ‘come here, Vidya’ would make your child understand the sentence better.
A period is used when we want to end the particular sentence. It is used as a full stop. Most of the children go on reading the sentence at a speed, stopping only to catch a breath when they are out of air. Teach your child to stop at a given sentence, when there is a full stop and then continue again.
A question mark emphasizes that the speaker is asking something. The mode of the voice should be such that it would show that you are inquiring about something. Teach the children by asking a question and telling him/her to write it down, using a question mark at the end. Usually the voice goes up while asking a question.
An exclamation is used when you are excited or surprised about something. Use sentences which carry exclamation mark and teach them the importance of it.
Buy the kids a book which is easier for them to understand. However, while buying books, avoid stories as they tend to have lot of dialogues which might prove tricky and confusing for a beginner. Information-oriented books such as biographies, news articles, science books on plants, rocks are the best.
Give a copy of a short passage which contains all important types of punctuations to each and every student in the class. The passage must be based on the age group of the students and be easily comprehensive. For example, while the elementary school students can be given a simple poetry, older students can be given a passage from a novel.
Handover a green and a red marker to each of the students and ask them to make a green mark at the beginning of the sentence. Each time they see a punctuation mark, it must be circled in red. Explain the students that it is a symbol rather than a letter. Give appropriate time to the students to read out the passage and encircle the punctuation mark while you can explain to them the purpose of punctuation marks in the sentence.
Give the students a home work of writing a sentence by using at least two punctuation marks.
Ask the children to read a text and note down the various places in which they find punctuation and the purpose of the punctuation mark. Discuss the purpose in the class. For example, if they have written down the actual purpose of using semi colon or a comma in sentence, check whether they have got it wrong.
Split the teams into two or more teams. Make use of an index card to create categories and questions. On the front portion of the index card, write down the points of each question. On the back portion of the index card, write the question. While one team takes a card, one of the students in the team has to answer the question which will be regarding punctuations. The team with the most number of points wins the prize.
Split the class into teams and provide a white board or an eraser or give them all the important punctuation marks made out of posters. The teacher can stand in front of the class and ask a question as “At what time did you had your breakfast?” Keep scores and provide a gift to the winning team.

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How To Teach Punctuation To Children

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