Guest Posted February 1, 2010 Posted February 1, 2010 Hi everyone just visiting the year 1 discussion on behalf of our yr 1 teacher who althought being fabulous is hitting a brick wall with getting her class to remember sapital letters. She has got them great at kung foo full stops but the message for capitals is not getting through! Anyone got some fun ideas that may help? Muchos thanks
Guest Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 I'm finding this a bit of a 'brick wall' at the moment. I was once told by a literacy advisor though that the most important thing is for children to understand a sentence as a unit of meaning and until they understand this capital letters and full stops are just not going to happen. This is all very well but I have children who can write sentences with full stops but still don't use capital letters at all. The way I'm looking at it at the moment is that the most important thing is to make sure the children know the capital letter equivalents first, as I know some of mine don't know all of them. Second thing is to ensure they are fully aware of the difference. If they are using capital letters in the middle of their sentences/words then they actually don't understand the difference yet. Finally I'm thinking about giving them small cards with drawings on to remind them as they do their work. One card will have a drawing to represent a full stop, the next a finger space and finally a capital letter one. They can refer to these cards whilst they work and also when they look back through their work. I haven't tried it yet but it's an idea I got off this forum so I'm hoping it will help!
Guest Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 Hi Karina, thanks for replying i will mention those thought cards to her x x x
Guest Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 When we are rehearsing sentences we are going to write when there is a capital letter we stand up tall with our arms stretched up above our heads as capital letters are used for important words, beginnings of sentences, names etc.... That is part of our kung fu punctuation method. Having the action seems to be really effective.
Susan Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 I'm finding that action helpful too, at the very least the sentence can be orally rehearsed with the capital letter in place.
Recommended Posts