When it’s time to review a topic that’s necessary but not the most interesting, it’s time to pull out your teacher’s bag of tricks – those classroom activities that are fun to do no matter what the content. Games, cut and paste activities, color-coding activities, sorts, and all manner of small or large group activities fit the bill.

And I’m guessing that capitalization and punctuation rules falls into that category of necessary but not so interesting in many of your classrooms! And they definitely are necessary (as much as we might like to ignore the topic!) because middle school and upper elementary kids need to be learning to edit and proof their own writing, and capitalization and punctuation are two of the basic things that they will always be checking for.

So, here are some ideas for fun ways to practice those capitalization and punctuation rules that middle graders need to know. These ideas are all from my teaching resource Capitalization and Punctuation – Foldables, Games, and Fun Activities.

Foldables

Foldables are always popular, especially when they involve cutting and pasting, and maybe a little coloring or drawing as well. Your crafty and hands-on kids will love these.

Foldables such as the foldable cubes, are great for displaying around the classroom. I also like foldables made to glue into students notebooks since they can serve as notes once saved there.

For the flower foldable, students write a capitalization or punctuation rule on each petal and then flip the petals over and write an example for each rule on the back.

Another simple foldable that is great for displaying in the classroom is a paper chain. Each student creates one or more links, using topics assigned by you such as capitalizing people’s names, capitalizing time words, capitalizing quotes, etc. with a definition or a rule on one side and an example on the other side.

Games

Three games that I like are a simple file folder game, bingo, and a concentration-style matching game. File folder games are great for small groups, matching games are perfect for partners, and bingo is an excellent whole-class game.

The file folder game is a simple board game with a path. There are two sets of cards – question cards which every student must answer before moving (to keep the game educational!) and risk cards which students must answer only when they land on certain spaces.

File folder games are easy to make, although somewhat time-consuming, and can be made to last longer by gluing the paper game board into a manilla fila folder.

Bingo games and concentration games can also be created about any topic that lends itself to sets of questions or sets of vocabulary words and definitions.

The file folder game shown here uses a mix of capitalization and punctuation questions. The question cards have specific answers, but the risk cards ask students to come up with examples of their own.

Other Fun Activities

These are so many more fun ways to review, but I’ll just mention two here – color-coding and sorts.

There’s just something about getting out the markers or colored pencils that makes an ordinary lesson more fun, so why not incorporate drawing or coloring as often as you can. For middle graders, I especially like color-coding activity sheets where the answers do not become obvious after the first few sections are colored.

That’s why my owl, shown below, sports very non-traditional colors. Students are given sets of three sentences and directed to choose the one with no errors. Each sentence is assigned a different color, and student’s finished owls can be graded quickly by comparing them with the colored answer key.

This cut-and-paste sort continues the theme of correct versus incorrect sentences. In addition to sorting the incorrect sentences from the correct ones, students also make the necessary corrections to the ones with errors.

When you’re looking over the objectives for teaching capitalization and punctuation skills, you might be surprised to see some of the specific rules that many middle graders are expected to know. Some are very detailed. There are lots of place names that need to be capitalized beyond just cities and streets – for example, the name of a bridge or a park. Commas need to be used in lots of different situations – for just one example, to separate a tag question from the rest of a sentence.

Practicing with fun games and activities gives your students a chance to interact with the mechanics of writing in an eclectic mix of situations that they will be glad to recall later as they proofread their own writings!