Punctuation seems to be an unnecessary evil, or an optional extra to many children when they are writing…

Creative Resources for primary children| How do we learn| Education

June 19, 2024•3 min read

Punctuation seems to be an unnecessary evil, or an optional extra to many children when they are writing…

We had our staff birthday dinner, and I got to talk to Dina, one of the tutors. She really is a fantastic woman. When you listen to her talk you marvel at how much she knows. I am so grateful to have people like her working with me.

From talking to her, I also decided to make today’s blog post about punctuation.

Punctuation seems to be an unnecessary evil, or an optional extra to many children when they are writing…

There are a few games that we play that focuses on this, but rather than waffle on for ages,

I’ll stick to just 3.

1. Jenga

2. Round the board game

3. Lily pads Jenga,

I’ve spoken about Jenga before as it’s a game I love. But I’ll quickly recap just in case.

On each brick of the Jenga tower write a punctuation mark.

Using Jenga to support your child with punctuation

The level of difficulty is at your discretion, and some of them will probably need to be repeated. Once you’ve built your tower take it in turns to remove a brick. Once successfully removed, you need to WRITE a sentence using that specific form of punctuation. The person who causes the tower to fall, looses.

Round the board game.

I think I must have been in an awful mood the day I created this game!

You both start in the bottom left corner where it says start. You then roll the dice and move the appropriate number of spaces around the board writing sentences using the appropriate punctuation as you go.

You will notice that next to the start button there is, what looks like a zebra crossing.

You must land on there to win. If you miss it, off you go around the board again.

You can’t repeat the same sentence more than once. To be honest, the game is evil. Trying to land on that square is like trying to find a pin in a haystack. But it’s fun, and don’t get me wrong, that does add to the sense of enjoyment.

Finally, Lily Pads.

(I probably ought to do a punctuation bundle in the Approach if I haven’t done so already).

You need to cut out roughly 12 lily pads (circles) with a punctuation mark on each. Each player then needs 2 counters each.

Do you remember the game ‘Tiddly-Winks’?

You flick your counter in this game in the same way that you would in that one. Hoping that you land on a lily pad. I used to use the frogs from Christmas crackers but could never find ones that jumped rather than doing a dramatic flip onto their back.

Again, each time you land on a lily pad, you write down a sentence using the form of punctuation that is written there.

The person with the most lily pads at the end wins.

Our goal at Clara James Tutoring is to make learning fun and accessible to everyone. If children are engaged in what they are doing they are more likely to want to participate, if they are enjoying it, they are more likely to relax and retain the information.

If they are retaining the information it will help boost their knowledge and with knowledge comes confidence.

If you have a child who enjoys learning through games and being more creative, and you enjoy spending time with them, you might be interested in the Clara James Approach, the membership group we have put together to support you in supporting your primary school aged child with their maths and English.

Interested?

Click here to learn more: The Clara James Approach

Dawn Strachan

For the past 20+ years I have been a firm believer that learning should be an enjoyable experience. I appreciate that traditionally education has revolved around worksheets, textbooks, listening to teachers. But a grounding in early years and working with children who had a variety of learning styles from I learned that it is an individual activity that is personal to all of us. We don’t all learn in the same way. Our influences, our experiences, our capabilities all influence how we retain information. But through it all, I believe that if we can make it enjoyable and engaging, they will want to participate. With participation comes practice which in turn boosts skill and confidence. With an increase in skill and confidence comes a willingness to have a go. This in turn leads to more practice which leads to a positive spiral of success. The moral, we need to make learning fun, engaging, use a range of techniques.

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