You can make up an activity for students to practice their knowledge of punctuation and capitals called the sentence scramble. In this activity, different words and punctuation marks are written on to index cards. Each student receives a variety of cards that contain words and punctuation marks that can be used to make statements or questions. The students must unscramble the cards and build a sentence out of them. The first task is for students to make the words into a statement and the second task is for them to rephrase the statement as a question. This also teaches them to use proper punctuation marks, and forces them to identify which word in the sentence must be capitalized.
Put your students to the test by turning your classroom into a publishing company. Each student plays the role of an editor who must proofread a short story and make changes to the punctuation and capitals that are incorrect. For instance, if a new sentence does not start with a capital letter, the student will circle the letter with a red pen, or draw two lines beneath the letter that needs to be capitalized. If the student finds missing punctuation marks, the student should circle the area, or cross out incorrect punctuation marks and replace with the correct ones. The teacher plays the role of the editor in chief who double checks the work.
Around the world is a classroom game that involves students standing beside their desks and, one at a time, being asked a question. Use this game to give it a capitalization and punctuation theme. For this activity, the teacher reads a short sentence to the first student. The student tells the teacher which words in the sentence must be capitalized, along with what type of punctuation is necessary for the end of the sentence. If the student answers correctly, he remains standing and it becomes the next student's turn to answer a new challenge. Students who answer incorrectly sit down and are disqualified from the game. The last student standing wins.
In this activity the teacher places three punctuation signs in three different corners of the classroom. In one corner is an exclamation point, in another is a question mark and in the third is the period. The fourth corner of the classroom is reserved for the phrase "Unknown." Students start out in the middle of the classroom and the teacher reads a sentence. After the sentence is read, the students move to the corner that represents the punctuation that they believe should be at the end of the sentence. Then another sentence is read and the students shift to the next corner that they believe is right. The "Unknown" corner is for those who do not know which punctuation mark is correct.