{"id":5038,"date":"2024-12-08T09:58:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T14:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/?p=5038"},"modified":"2025-05-14T10:55:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:55:36","slug":"how-to-teach-punctuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/how-to-teach-punctuation\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Teach Punctuation To High Schoolers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You’ve just read your students’ first essays of the year, and you’re horrified. You expected some comma errors, but those papers are downright unreadable! Where do you go from here?<\/strong> In this post, I’m going to show how to teach punctuation to high school students who just don’t get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’d like to save a whole lot of time (or don’t feel super confident with grammar yourself), be sure to check out my Grammar Lessons Bundle<\/a>.<\/strong> They’re sequenced so that each lesson builds on the previous one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you need tips on sequencing your grammar lessons, this blog post lays it all out for you.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Pinterest Pin that reads, \"How To Teach Punctuation\" on top of images of question marks and exclamation points on colorful cards<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

How To Teach Punctuation Step #1: Establish Students’ Baseline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to know where to start if you don’t know where your students are right now. So, the first step is to figure that out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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This resource includes three aligned grammar assessments<\/a> perfect for evaluating your students at the beginning, midway, and at the end of your class.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you did just have students turn in some writing, that can give you a clue. You might have an idea of where they’re struggling from their writing samples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it’s early in the year–or you know you want to gather some data right from the start–you can give students a grammar pre-assessment. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make sure that you have a matching post-assessment to go with that pre-assessment. (You can grab my Grammar Pre-, Mid-, and Post-assessments here<\/a> if you don’t have time to create your own.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your students might be great writers who struggle with grammatical details. In that case, you can jump right into punctuation. But if your students’ sentences don’t make sense, or they’re not even using end punctuation, you might have to go back further in your lessons. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How To Teach Punctuation Step #2: Make Sure Students Have A Solid Foundation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, you’ve gathered your data and established a baseline. If your students already seem to understand how to craft a sentence, you can go ahead and move into punctuation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if your students are struggling with fragments, run-ons, or correctly using end punctuation, I’m sorry. You’ll have to go back to basics. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many grammar rules hinge on students understanding independent vs. dependent clauses<\/a> that I recommend you make sure you cover this concept thoroughly before discussing punctuation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(You can learn more about teaching clauses in this blog post!)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my own classes, I tried to teach three essential lessons before moving on to punctuation: part of a sentence<\/a> (subject and predicates), sentence structure<\/a> (simple, compound, etc.), and verbals<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(You could<\/em> skip verbals<\/a>, but if I have time, I like to cover them. It makes explaining why students incorrectly identified a verb later much easier.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t jump straight into punctuation if your students can’t even identify a correct sentence from an incorrect one!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Pinterest Pin that reads, \"How To Teach Punctuation To High Schoolers\" on top of images of question marks and exclamation points on cards<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

How To Teach Punctuation Step #3: Ease Into Punctuation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now you can finally work on punctuation skills! Hooray!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But proceed gently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many students (and even some English teachers!) have this kind of grammar PTSD.<\/strong> You want to go slowly and start with the easier punctuation to help students build confidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my grammar sequencing blog post<\/a>, I go into more detail, but I like to start with apostrophes<\/a> first. Students will probably know some rules about apostrophes<\/a> already; they can begin their punctuation journey feeling informed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, I work on other punctuation marks like colons<\/a>, semicolons<\/a>, hyphens<\/a>, and dashes<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, I leave commas<\/a> for last.<\/strong> Why? They’re so complicated! They have so many rules!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you teach the other punctuation marks first, students will learn some comma rules along the way. They’ll learn about commas in a list from your colon lesson<\/a>. They will have learned about commas and coordinating conjunctions from your lessons on sentence structure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By leaving commas last, you’re teaching students comma rules early and slowly.<\/strong> By the time you actually get to your comma lesson, students will know most of the rules. This builds their confidence and shrinks the time it will take them to “get” commas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n