Pick a Mark of Punctuation

1. Pick a Mark of Punctuation • Choose from these punctuation marks: • Apostrophe ‘ • Comma , • Dash -- • Ellipse … • hyphen - • parenthesis ( ) • quotation marks “” • Semicolon ; • Which mark of punctuation did you chose? Why? How often do you use this mark of punctuation in your writing now? • I chose the ellipse because it is a neat looking mark of punctuation that I hardly ever use. I see a lot of authors using it, especially in chapter books. I know that a lot of people use it in their emails, but usually it is not used correctly. Some people use it because they aren’t sure if they should use a period or not.

2. Start Reading! Start reading some of the picture books recommended by your teacher. Some great books are by authors Tomie De Paola, Mem Fox, Patricia Polacco, and Cynthia Rylant. Look for the mark of punctuation that you are studying. You might want to mark them with a Post-It note. Copy enough of the sentence or sentences around the mark of punctuation so we can understand how it is used. Find at least three examples. Make sure you tell which book they came from. • Example #1 • this new year… • the sky will still be there • the stars will still shine • From The Stars Will Still Shine by Cynthia Rylant. • Example #2 • The unlikely protagonist…might have stepped out of The Far Side…. • From the Publisher’s Weekly Review on the back of The Old Woman Who Named Things by Cynthia Rylant. • Example #3 • They said, “Beh, beh …oy, boy, and luh, luh…ook, look.” • From Thank you, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco.

3. What do you Notice? Tell what you noticed about each of the three examples. It should be something different for each example. Stuck? Not sure what to notice? Here are some ideas: The mark comes at the beginning of a a list. The mark makes you pause more than you might with another mark. The mark makes you notice a word or phrase more than you might otherwise. The word is pronounced differently because of the mark of punctuation. The possibilities are endless! Example #1 The ellipse makes you pause before you find out what will happen in the new year. Example #2 The ellipse seems to show words that were not included in the quote on the back. It takes out things that they didn’t think were important enough to include on the back of a book. Example #3 The ellipse makes you pause and also helps to see how long it took the kids in the class to sound out the words.

4. Why does the author do this? Now look at all the examples and what you noticed about the punctuation mark in each one. Think about why the author would include this mark of punctuation in his or her writing. Write about why you think the author would do this. • Why does the author(s) chose to use this mark of punctuation? You should be able to think of several reasons that may be different for each example. • The ellipse is used in the first and third examples to make the reader pause. In the first example, the author seems to want to create some expectation or suspense. In the third example, the author wants you to pause to understand how long it took the children to sound out the words. The pause needs to be longer than a comma. • In the second example, the publisher is probably the one who used the ellipse. Their job is to sell the book, so they chose to take out the words that wouldn’t help to sell the book. The ellipse showed that they had done that.

5. You Try It! Now it is your time to write using the mark of punctuation that you studied. You will use other marks of punctuation as well, but make sure to use your mark of punctuation twice. You can chose to write about anything. If you’re stuck and looking for something to write about, try this link of writing topics. http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/prompts.html • Add your original writing here: • On Friday, the teachers announced the jobs for our JA BizTown field trip. I couldn’t wait to hear the job that I received. They called us all together to announce the jobs. It seemed to take forever to hear my job. The list went on and on, “ John Smith… CEO of JA Bank, Elena Martinez… CFO of JA Bank, Marquez Cooper… teller at JA Bank.” Why couldn’t they read faster? We were all dying!

6. Share Your Learning! Find your punctuation mark here! Click on the link below to access the punctuation study wiki. Find the link on the left hand side under the navigation button with the mark of punctuation that you studied. http://punctuationstudy.wikispaces.com/ Chose the option at the top to “Edit This Page”. Share your examples, what you noticed about each one, and why you think the author used them in the wiki. Remember that cutting and pasting from your PowerPoint Starter will save you a lot of time! Be sure to add your name so we know who added the information. Chose “Edit this Page”