Editing for Capitalization and

Punctuation
Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade Writing 60 minutes

by M Knutson May 26, 2017

Students often understand the basic conventions of writing, but may need support in incorporating these skills
into their work. In this lesson, students will review some of the more common capitalization and punctuation
errors and apply their editing skills to real writing.

Learning Objectives
Students will be able to edit a piece of writing that contains dialogue for capitalization and punctuation
errors.

Materials and Preparation Key Terms

Poster or class set of a handout with common dialogue

editing symbols and their meanings proper noun
One page of text, including dialogue, from a
novel with all punctuation removed (whited out
or deleted)
Student writing samples (journal, essay, etc.)
Optional: Class set of the To Capitalize or Not
to Capitalize? worksheet
Optional: Class set of the Using Quotation
Marks worksheet
Optional: Class set of the End of Sentence
Punctuation worksheet

Lesson
Introduction (10 minutes)

Project your punctuation-free page from a novel. (See Materials and Preparation)
Ask students to share their observations.
Select a student, or students, to read the page aloud.
Discuss how this was different from reading a standard page of punctuated text. Students may observe
that it was more difficult because it was unclear where a sentence and piece of dialogue started and
ended.
If it doesn’t arise in the discussion, note that the use of capital letters helps to indicate the start and end
points.
Summarize this activity by noting that punctuation and capitalization provide valuable information to the
reader. Use the metaphor of traffic signals. The ideas and sentences are like the cars, and the
punctuation and capitalization are like traffic signals and road surface markings.
Ask students to name a few kinds of traffic signals and what their “jobs” are. Ask students, what is the job
of a quotation mark? What is the job of a period? What is the job of a capital letter? (These can have
multiple jobs.)

Get more lesson plans at https://www.education.com/lesson-plans/

Explicit Instruction/Teacher Modeling (5 minutes)

Explain that we, as writers, are often focusing on word choice, ideas, style, description, and other big
ideas while writing, and therefore sometimes make capitalization and punctuation mistakes in the
process. This is why we need to learn to edit our work and others’ work.
Sometimes, if we are using a computer, the software can identify those errors, but on paper we need to
use editing symbols.
Go over editing symbols and conventions depicted on the poster (for example, circling a spelling error,
putting two lines under a lowercase letter that needs to be capitalized, etc.)
Demonstrate how editing symbols are used.

Guided Practice/Interactive Modeling (15 minutes)

Review the rules for punctuating dialogue. (See Related Books and/or Media for more information on
punctuation rules.)
Return to the text used at the beginning of the lesson and demonstrate how to indicate missing
punctuation in dialogue, applying punctuation conventions.
Review the rules for capitalizing proper nouns. (See Related Books and/or Media for extra support.)
Have students make a T-chart and list 10 common nouns on one side and 10 proper nouns on the other
side.
Last, review end-of-sentence punctuation, including where you would use a period, a question mark, or
an exclamation point.

Independent Working Time (15 minutes)

Instruct students to take out a sample of their writing that needs workshopping: a story, journal entry,
poem, etc.
Have students exchange papers with a classmate.
Using the editing symbols on the class poster as a reference point, have students read their classmate's
work and make editing suggestions.
Instruct students to return the writing to its author and discuss their edits.

Extend

Differentiation

Support: Distribute a class set of the Using Quotation Marks worksheet and have students practice
applying the rules by adding punctuation.

Support: Distribute the End of Sentence Punctuation worksheet and have students practice applying the
rules by adding punctuation.

Enrichment: Distribute the Using Quotation Marks worksheet and have students practice applying the
rules by adding punctuation.

Related Books and/or Media

Rules for Punctuating Dialogue

Rules for Capitalizing Proper Nouns

Review

Assessment (10 minutes)

Write the following sentence on the board and have students copy and correct capitalization and
punctuation: michelle obama went to berkeley california in june and visited tilden park mom declared

Get more lesson plans at https://www.education.com/lesson-plans/

Review and Closing (5 minutes)

Discuss: What are the consequences of leaving your writing unedited, with capitalization and
punctuation errors? How might the reader respond?

Get more lesson plans at https://www.education.com/lesson-plans/