Teach students about proper punctuation by asking them to fix punctuation mistakes. Write several sentences on the board with incorrect or incomplete punctuation. Ask students to work in teams to fix the punctuation by coming up to the board to make corrections. Alternatively, ask teams to write sentences with incorrect punctuation and then challenge another team to fix the mistakes.
Punctuation lets readers know where to pause or stop when reading silently or out loud. Show students the importance of punctuation with choral reading. Write a sentence on the board with no punctuation and ask students to read it out loud. Next, add punctuation to the sentence and ask students to read it aloud again, noting any differences in meaning. Give students slips of paper with no punctuation and encourage them to work in teams to try different punctuation possibilities. Invite students to read the sentences out loud to the class to determine the correct punctuation.
Teach students how to use punctuation with mixed-up sentences. Write sentences with punctuation on a strip of card stock. Cut the sentence into pieces and place each sentence into a small plastic bag. Ask students to work in groups to put the sentences back together. Encourage students to find different possibilities for punctuation to create different meanings.
Teach students how to correctly punctuate with letters, suggests the website Utah Education Network. Put students in pairs and ask each student to write a short letter to their partner, but leave out punctuation. Next, ask students to exchange letters and to add punctuation to the letter they received. When students have finished adding punctuation to the letters, encourage them to switch the letters again and check the punctuation added by their partner to see if it is correct.