Welcome to another Punctuation Puzzle! Yep… a puzzle that you solve by putting in the correct punctuation and words/usage fixes—along with explanations and answers about each error!

Perfect for students and teachers alike!

Today’s Puzzle is about Led verses Lead and Alot verses A Lot … and it uses an interesting sentence from one of our Write-for-a-Month/Write On books.

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Eleventh Grade: Guide your student in editing his papers.

I always advise homeschooling moms to use grading time wisely in all subjects. For example, in math, rather than grading your student’s math separately and giving him back a paper with a score on it, grade it with your student right by your side—and point out errors and use grading time as teaching time. (This will be some of the most valuable teaching time that you can ever find! What better way to learn than from our mistakes immediately.)

Some suggestions for editing with your student (for parents and teachers and homeschoolers) include

(1) Have your student read his paper aloud and both of you “listen” for errors.

(2) When helping him learn where to put in commas, especially if the missing comma can be heard with voice inflection, read the sentence in question aloud to your student, emphasizing where the comma goes, and have him tell you where he “hears” it should be.

(3) If the errors you are finding are paragraph break mistakes, read the portion to him that you believe should be one paragraph and ask him what that paragraph is about. Write that “topic” along the side of that portion. Read the next portion and ask him what that part is about. Continue doing this, drawing lines where a paragraph break should be (based on your and his discussion and dissecting of the text).

(4) If the error is that of subject-verb agreement, find the incorrect sentence and ask him what the subject of the sentence is. Then ask him what the verb is. Ask him if they agree. (Again, read them aloud {without the intervening material that might be stumping him} so that he can “hear” the error.)

(5) If he has not learned to find errors very well, consider using an editing program (like the book Editor in Chief) so that he can hone his editing skills in a manner that is “checkable” with the answer key. These skills really do carry over to a student’s own writing!

(6) If your student is fairly good at finding errors, but you still find many more than he does, make a note in the margin of each line or so that says the number of errors that are in that sentence. Let him look for errors one line at a time with your oversight.

(7) Finally, do not underestimate a student’s ability to learn from your edits on his paper. If you mark his errors then review them with him (“A comma should go before the ‘and’ because you have a complete sentence on the left and a complete sentence on the right”), he will gain great editing skills.

Note: Check out the Editor Duty assignments that are in each weekly Character Quality Language Arts sample for some editing passages (with the Answer Keys) for your student to practice with. There are also editing passages in the back of Meaningful Composition 11 I: Timed Essays and The Three P’s of Persuasion

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Eleventh Grade: Guide your student in editing his papers.

Editing papers is one of many students’ most hated tasks. However, if our kids are guided in how to do this from the early grades, it will not feel so overwhelming to them. This post has suggestions for teaching the high schooler (and junior high student) editing tricks that they can use right away…

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If you are a writing teacher, use your feedback on students’ papers to point out advanced techniques done correctly. Sometimes students write without realizing that they are doing some cool things in their writing.

For example, here are some comments I have just made on a couple of students’ papers in order to even use grading time as teaching time:

*Superb compound-complex sentence!
*Another great appositive
*Love this CS; CA, CS
*Thanks for remembering that periods always go inside closing quotation marks in the US
*Great details…I appreciate you putting at least two pieces of information in each sentence!
*Love this informative opening paragraph with its strong link to the body and its MYSTERY!
*Triff!
*Cool vocab in this sentence!
*Perfect personification! 🙂
*Love this allieration!

Happy teaching, learning, and grammar today, LL friends!

The post Writing Feedback for Students: They are TRIFF! appeared first on Character Ink.

Others? Signs that have the following errors are recent ones:

1. It’s when the person means its

2. “There going fast” instead of They’re (say it uncontracted—they are…and you will know if you have the correct one!)

3. No mark between phrases to show that a phrase ended and another one started—

          Great Sale on
          Tires Get Your
          Oil Changed Today

Even this is better:

        Great Sale on
        Tires—Get Your
        Oil Changed Today

Enough complaining for tonight! Have a happily-correct grammar week!

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