Lesson Plan #5: Punctuation and Capitalization Lesson Plan for Journaling

Unit Working Title: My Identity through Art

Unit Big Idea (Concept/Theme): Identity / Self-Expression through literature

Unit Primary Skill focus: Self-Expressive Writing

Week ___2___ of 3; Plan #____5____ of 9; [90 mins.]

Plan type: __X__Full-Detail

Content Requirement Satisfied: Writing Instruction: Mechanics

Unit Learning Objectives (numbered) [from my Backwards Design Unit Document],

followed by Specific lesson objectives (lettered) being taught in this lesson:

SWBAT:
Cognitive (know/understand):
1. SW understand that people can express their unique identities through creative
outlets.
a. Students will practice writing pieces that express their own
identities.
b. Students will know that writing is an exercise that requires
certainly mechanical skills in order to be basically legible.

Affective (feel/value) and/or Non-Cognitive:

6. Students will feel the power of art to convey identity.
a. Students will feel the power of using art to articulate and display
their individual sense of identity.

Performance (do):
8. Students will create and continue to work on pieces of art that show their own
identity.
a. Student will learn basic punctuations skills necessary to making
their work accessible to other readers.

SOLs: [List with numbers portrayed in the SOL document]

6.8 The student will edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling,
sentence structure, and paragraphing.

CCSs: [List with numbers portrayed in the CCS document]

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are
appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
Methods of Assessment:

Diagnostic Formative Summative

Before this lesson, the
students will have completed
a prompted journal entry on
identity to practice writing for
the summative assessment
(Found Poetry). The teacher
found that students often
failed to punctuate and
capitalize properly in their
previous writing piece, so
today will be spent learning
when and how to use these
skills while writing.
Today the students will fill
out a handout while the
teacher models editing for
punctuation and
capitalization, and then will
fill out a worksheet while
they do this on their own.
These materials will be
collected to assess how
students understand the use
of punctuation and
capitalization in writing. The
Exit Slip will allow students
to pose any further questions
they have after todays
lesson.
The Found Poetry
assessment at the end of this
unit will require a journal
entry, from which the
students will create poetry.
This writing workshop will
help them with their journal
pieces so they have better
writing to pull their poems
from.

Procedures/Instructional Strategies
[Note: Any words that represent what I would say directly to students appear in italics.]

Beginning Room Arrangement: Students

[Changes in this arrangement that become necessary later will be noted in the plan]
Students will enter and sit in their previously assigned seats. They have been placed in base
groups of 4 students each, and are grouped together based on varying readiness level in
reading and similar interests (collected from interest surveys taken in the first week of school).
Students can see on the board that they should get their Do Now Journals and answer a few
questions that are projected onto the board about punctuation and capitalization (Appendix A).

1. [_10_mins.] Bridge/Hook/Opening to lesson:

Hey everyone, thanks for coming in quietly! If you havent already, please retrieve your Do Now
Journals and get started answering the questions I have up on the board for you. Work by
yourselves for about 5 minutes and then Ill call your attention back up to me!
[Allow students to work for 5 minutes individually on the questions.] Great, guys, lets go over
these! Who has an idea about #1? What kinds of words do we see capitalized when we read?
[Go through the questions, making sure to tie the concepts to reading; when students read they
see capitalization and punctuation used properly so it may be easier for them to connect these
ideas to other texts than their own writing. Look for students to say that punctuation can add to
the expression of a sentence, and also works to organize and separate thoughts while writing.
Capitalization is used at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns. If they have trouble
answering these questions, pull out My Name by Sandra Cisneros used the other day to
point at parts in the text where punctuation and capitalization are used, and ask students what is
happening in those parts of the text.]

Right, everyone! So we use punctuation and capitalization to better organize our writing, and
give signals to our readers about how our thoughts are grouped. Lets look at how we can do
this in our own writing.

2. [_25_mins.] Mini-Lesson: modeling editing for punctuation and capitalization

[Pass out passage of My Name that has been edited by the teacher to have bad punctuation
and capitalization (Appendix B). Use ELMO to put the same sheet on the board for students to
see]

Today well be looking at My Name again. Who can tell me really quickly what this story was
about? [Allow a minute for students to respond.] Right, so in this passage Esperanza was
talking about her family and how she finds identity within her name. This passage is from that
story, except this time, Ive taken out some punctuation and capitalization that we saw there the
first time. Im going to work through the piece, showing you guys where I would stop while
reading to add punctuation and capitalization. Please mark your own sheets as you see me
doing up here while I work.

So here is the first sentence: in english my name means hope In spanish it means too many
letters. The first word in needs to be capitalized because it is the first word of my sentence. To
mark on the paper that I need to capitalize this letter, I will draw three small lines under it. I do
this so I can remember that the word needs to be capitalized when I rewrite the piece.
[Underline in 3 times in a colored pen and look up to see if students are doing the same. Allow
for any questions about that notation, and explain to students that 3 underlines is simply how we
denote a word that needs to be capitalized.] Awesome, one down! Lets keep on with this
sentence. When I get between the words hope and In, I feel like I am moving on to a new
thought. In is capitalized, which tells me this is a new sentence. So my readers know this is a
new sentence, I need to add punctuation after hope. For this sentence, Im going to end with a
period. [Add a period after hope. Ask students to do the same.]
[Work through the rest of the piece this way, thinking aloud and asking students for suggestions.
When reaching the sentence It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine.She was
a horse woman too, discuss with students the importance of spacing between sentences in
order to separate them into different thoughts. Draw a small arrow between the words that need
to be spaced apart.]

Great work, guys. Now Im going to show you the original passage with the corrections we have
just made. [Show original passage but with places that were corrected during the modeling
colored red so students can see where changes were made / how much more organized it
looks.]
3. [_25_mins.] Individual work Editing sentences

[Pass out Appendix C, the individual editing worksheet.] Id like you guys to work through the
rest of My Name the way we have just done, by using triple underlines to show where words
should be capitalized, and putting punctuation where you need it. If you see any sentences that
need to be space out, draw a little arrow between the words that need to be space, like I did on
the other worksheet. For this section, please use a red colored to pencil to write in your edits.
What questions do you all have about this activity? Great! Lets begin, and let me know what
questions you have while working.

[Allow students to work for about 15 minutes individually, taking questions as they come up. If
students have trouble, redirect them to a similar sentence edited during the mini-lesson, and ask
them what we did there to fix a sentence. Bring class together after finishing to go over
worksheet using the ELMO.]

Thanks for working so hard, everyone! Now lets go over these. While we are working, feel free
to ask any questions you have. Please add or change any answers you did not originally have
with a blue colored pencil so I can see how your answers changed. Who wants to help me with
the first sentence we see here? Whats the first thing I need to do? [Take volunteers for each
sentence, editing as the students suggest. If someone makes a wrong suggestion, first ask what
their train of thought was, then ask the rest of the class what they think and get a correct
opinion. Kindly explain to the student why they were incorrect. Work through the entire passage
like this until finished.]

4. [20 minutes] Editing Personal Journal pieces

If everyone could take out their journals again that we worked in earlier in class that would be
great! Please turn to the journal entry we did two classes ago on Identity. Using the skills we
talked about today, Id like you all to read through your pieces and mark where you should add
punctuation and capitalization. Please use a red colored pencil to mark up your pieces! When
you have finished, we are going to type our pieces on the class laptops, so please take your
time so that you are ready to go once we move to the computers! What questions do you all
have?

[Allow students to work, circulating the room and taking questions as they arise. If students
finish, read through their work quickly and decide if they are ready to use a laptop and begin
typing their pieces. With two minutes left, tell students to wrap what they are doing and then
return their journals and / or laptops to their proper places.]

5. [_10_mins] Exit Slip and Closure:

[Pass out Exit Slip, Appendix D.] Thanks for working so hard, everyone. Hopefully all of our
pieces are on their way to having perfect capitalization and punctuation! Please take just a
moment to fill out these few questions I have on this exit slip for you. [Collect other worksheets
from the day while students work on exit slip.] Thanks, everyone! Ill see you next time and well
continue talking about identity.

Differentiated Instruction to accommodate one or more of my profiled students:

Nicholas has more trouble writing than other students in the class (both in motivation and
ability), so I will conference with him first to see how he is doing. He does not take feedback
especially well, and often thinks is work is fine without any editing. I will provide for him a copy
of my annotated passage from the modeling session, and ask him to compare how the
sentences are separated there and in his own writing. I will also refer to his IR book, to have him
point out to me how he notices sentence separation there. This will help him see how
professional writing is crafted to be easier for the reader to understand.

Materials Needed (list):

1. ELMO
2. Colored Pencils
3. Worksheets (in appendix)
4. Class laptops

Materials Appendix: (e.g., supplementary texts, Ppts, overheads, graphic organizers,

handouts, etc.)

Appendix A: Do Now Questions

1. When you are reading, some words you see are capitalized. Why are some
words capitalized, and others are not?
2. What is punctuation? Draw a few symbols of punctuation that you can think of!
3. Why do writers use punctuation when writing?
Appendix B: Mini-lesson Sample Sentences

Name: ________________________

Punctuation and Capitalization Editing Practice: Excerpt from My Name by Sandra Cisneros
in english my name means hope In spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it

means waiting. It is like the number nine.a muddy color. it is the mexican records my father

plays on sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.

It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine.She was a horse woman too, born like

me in the chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but i

think this is a chinese lie because the chinese, like the mexicans, don't like their women strong.

My great-grandmother.i would've liked to have known her, a wild, horse of a woman, so wild she

wouldn't marry. until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. just

like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier that's the way he did it.

Appendix C: Individual Editing with My Name

Name: ______________________________

Mark these sentences using Triple underlines when words need to be capitalized and putting
punctuation where you need it! Look to the example we did in class for help.
And the story goes she never forgave him She looked out the window her whole life, the way so

many women sit their sadness on an elbow. i wonder if she made the best with what she got or

was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be.esperanza. I have

inherited her name, but i don't want to inherit her place by the window

at school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of

your mouth But in spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as

thick as sister's name magdalena--which is uglier than mine. magdalena who at least- -can

come home and become Nenny But i am always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself

under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees.esperanza as lisandra

or maritza or zeze the X. Yes Something like Zeze the X will do.

Appendix D: Exit Slip

Name: _____________________

1. Why do we use punctuation when writing?

2. What kinds of words do we capitalize?

3. What questions do you still have about punctuation and capitalization in writing?