Activity Summary:

This activity is used to help students with sentence-level editing. The students have 20 min. to find all the punctuation problems on the handout.

Instructions:

“This is a classroom activity. I usually use this activity right before a major writing assignment or during a unit on grammar and punctuation. Because the activity is a game of sorts, it removed some of the writing anxiety.”

1. Before beginning this activity, students should have written something for class
2. Explain to students that the activity should help them become familiar with the common punctuation mistakes
3. I sometimes will bring a king size candy bar for the first person to successfully identify all of the errors.
4. Give students at least 20 minutes to complete the exercises. Once they’ve finished, call individual students to the lectern computer to have them demonstrate the solved exercise to the rest of the class.
5. Discuss what errors you found. Find out what students had a hard time with, what errors they make in the papers you’ve seen.
6. Most importantly, make sure to stress the value of knowing your common mistakes and systematically changing those mistakes.