Mentor Texts to Teach Punctuation

As the end of the year nears for us, I am trying to make sure that my students are as prepared as possible for first grade.

One area which we continue to need to work on is punctuation.  I love to use the Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems. At this point of the year, many can read the books and understand how witty Mo Willems is as the author of these characters.

First, I read I am Going!.  I like to use this book because several of the same words or phrases appear throughout the book but change meaning due to the punctuation.  This helps to show how important punctuation is to meaning.

Afterwards, I created simple anchor charts to meet our standard; recognize and name the punctuation.

Students wrote their own Piggie and Elephant stories; trying to use each type of punctuation.  Here is a sample. Can you tell which Piggie and Elephant book it is modeled after?

                Gerald want to go play? Yes?                             Gerald. There's a bird in your head!                  Gerald. Now there's a nest.

We will continue to work on this skill for the next few weeks.  My hope is that children see how punctuation plays an important role in reading and writing as well as text meaning.

In the past, I've used these books as well.  I like them because they are easy enough to be read by beginning readers.

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Cat the Cat, How Cute is That

Look what we made! As I mentioned in a previous post, my class loves the Cat the Cat series by Mo Willems.  The engaging pictures and repetitive text captures the interest of every reader in my classroom.  Our shared reading text last week was Cat the Cat, Who is That.



We decided to make this into a big book. First we learned how to make Cat the Cat.  I wish I had taken pictures of their work because they turned out adorable!  Then, we divided the work.  Each child had a character from the book to draw.

I typed up the text and used their pictures to make our big book.  What I loved about this project is the each child was involved in the making of the book.  And, now, I have a big book that I can use for many years to come!

Happy Teaching and Learning!

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