In preparing for this game, you will need to come up with about 20 sentences that have many words that illustrate the different rules of capitalization. You should have several proper nouns and adjectives scattered throughout these sentences. Next, have the students sit at their desks and read each sentence to the students slowly. Have the students stand up when they think a word should be capitalized and sit down when they think the word shouldn’t be capitalized. Any disagreement over whether a word should be capitalized can be discussed with the students. Using words like river alone in one sentence and then together with a proper name in another sentence, for example Mississippi River, can help emphasize certain rules.
For this game you will need to divide your class into teams. Type 20 sentences with capitalization mistakes throughout them. Make sure you have both words that are not capitalized that should be and words that are capitalized that should not be. Next, make enough copies so that each team has a copy of the sentences. Give the teams five minutes to correct as many of the capitalization errors as they can. Lastly, have the teams share all the mistakes they corrected and give each team a point for every correct mistake they caught.
This one works a lot like a spelling bee but tests a kid’s capitalization skills instead. To prepare, you will need to type 100 or more sentences in a computer making sure to number each sentence. Have all the kids come forward and stand in a line. Show the first kid sentence number one on the computer screen and have him correct any capitalization mistakes in that sentence. You can have multiple capitalization mistakes in some sentences and none in others. Just like a spelling bee, once a kid gets his sentence correct, he goes to the end of the line and waits for his next turn. If he gets the sentence wrong, he is out of the competition.
This game will test the speed the students can find mistakes in capitalization and correct them. First, divide your class into two teams. Create two separate pieces of paper containing several sentences with capitalization errors on them and place one on the blackboard in front of the first team and the other on the blackboard in front of the other team. Give each team a colored marker. This game will work like a relay race with the first student going to the board for each team and correcting the first sentence. When the first student has made the proper corrections, he takes the marker back to the next teammate; she then goes to the board to correct the next sentence. The first team to correct all their sentences without any errors wins.