Shortening Sentences (Primary Literacy)

SurlyBoy

Hi all,

I have a fairly basic question which I hope has a magically straightforward answer. Background - I am a primary teacher teaching multigrade.

A problem I find across almost all grades is children writing with little skill to differentiate between the sentences with punctuation. They are fully aware of how to use a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark but it is in finding the end of the sentence that they find difficult.

For example,imagine this written in their weekend recount:

"I went to my Nan's house last weekend it was great. Later I got a new fidget spinner it was green my mam thought it was cool."

When of course it ought to be,

"I went to my Nan's house last weekend. It was great. Later, I got a new fidget spinner. It was green. My mam thought it was cool."

When I write I try and have the children as independent as possible through self-assessment and peer-assessment. They all have individual literacy targets to work on but I find it hard to articulate this particular mistake and I also find it difficult to teach explicitly.

Any advice?

Thanks a lot.

evolving_doors

Record them saying some part of a story (What happened the weekend).
Playback and rest of the class transcribe it.
Students look for pauses. Short is a comma , long is full stop.
Chose the most calm reader in the class!