Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional help with punctuation!

My DS12, dx with ADHD-in, has major problems with punctuation.

He probably has some dsygraphia, or at least a relative weakness in written expression. His VCI is around 140, but his WIAT score for written expression is about 100. He has good spelling, grammar and sentence structure, but terrible punctuation and some problems with organisation of ideas into paragraphs, etc.

Does anyone have advice on exercises or tricks to help him? He will have lots of free time over the summer, and I would like him to work on his writing before he starts middle school next year.

He doesn't seem to notice the "stopping point" where a period is needed, and his capitalization is spotty as well. Sometimes he uses a comma where he should have a period. Often there is no comma when one is needed. It just doesn't come naturally to him, and he is not good at proof-reading his work (partly doesn't want to make the effort, but also because it is hard for him).

I suggested that he read his work out loud and it would be obvious where the periods are needed. He catches some problems this way, but not all.

I'm looking for a fun, entertaining way of helping him with this. He has done exercises adding missing punctuation to texts, and does pretty well at this (although resists doing it because it is "boring"), but he can't seem to apply what he knows to his own writing.

Have you considered having him type up his work on the computer? Microsoft Word will put a lovely little squiggly line under errors like you are talking about. He can type away, then go back and easily see where he needs to go over his work and adjust punctuation.

My favorite teacher in high school had the most ingenious way to teach advanced grammar. He taught a creative writing unit where we wrote a well-conceived short story. He graded the story purely on development, creativity, etc. Then he started with grammar issues: spelling, proper paragraphing, comma placement, the dreaded run-on sentence, and so on. We used our own short story to correct each grammitical area he reviewed. Our final grade was a combination of grammar and creativity. I am indebted to him for supergluing these these rules in my brain. When I use a run-on sentence these days, it is purely for creative purposes, much like Hawthorn


Maybe you could adapt this approach?

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255843

I've been reading the homeschooling forum and, quote,

Copywork and dictation deal with the mechanics of spelling and punctuation in a whole-to-parts way and spelling books and grammar books deal with it in a parts-to-whole way. You need to do the narration and the dicatation in order to put the pieces together and apply them.

Unquote.

So they want your kid to correctly copy, by hand, beautiful sentences from literature. They think the hand will learn Grammer by habit. I took a poetic liscense there. They think the eyes and brain will get used to writing well constructed sentences by hand so that, through repetition, clumsy sentences look unnatural. This is supposed to work well if you copy many beautiful, complex sentences written by really good writers like the ones who wrote classic literature. The better the writer, the better the practice.

After you practice a sentence a day for a while they want you to dictate an equally great sentence from a classical author, slowly, several times, in segments if need be, until your child can hear the sentence the way it's written and repeat it with appropriate emphasis and pauses and then write it down.

IMO reading outloud a writer he wants to write as good as might connect the punctuation on the paper with the sound of his voice. Good writing uses audio cogs too, not just visual.

I don't know whether it would work for your child, but you might consider teaching clause analysis and then hanging punctuation on that. For example, putting a comma where there should be a period - or a semi-colon - typically means connecting two main clauses that way. If you understand how to find a finite verb, you have some hope of understanding that.

The other thing I'd do is to point out the arbitrariness of many of the rules; part of the problem may be that he's looking for logic where, really, there is only convention. This is something you notice if you are aware of the differences between e.g. US and British English, for example - we have different rules for how to punctuate speech, among other things.

"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" is entertaining.

I believe there are some entertaining e-books put out by Scholastic TeacherExpress that might help too. We downloaded these when there was a dollar-per-PDF sale, which they run pretty frequently. We haven't used any of them but they might be helpful:

More Proofreading Practice, Please! Grade 3
More Proofreading Practice, Please! Grade 4
More Proofreading Practice, Please! Grade 5
No Boring Practice, Please! Funny Fairy Tale Grammar
No Boring Practice, Please! Funny Fairy Tale Proofreading
No Boring Practice, Please! Punctuation and Capitalization
No Boring Practice, Please! Sentence Structure
Revision Mini-Lessons: Grade 3
Revision Mini-Lessons: Grade 4
Revision Mini-Lessons: Grade 5
Revision Mini-Lessons: Grade 6
Super Sentences and Perfect Paragraphs
Writing Skills Made Fun: Capitalization, Punctuation and Spelling
Writing Skills Made Fun: Parts of Speech
Writing Skills Made Fun: Sentences and Paragraphs

I'd also look into resources on sentence diagramming, on the basis that it might help, at least with certain problems such as comma placement, to understand sentences more from a structural perspective. These books are highly rated:

Rex Barks
Better Sentence Structure Through Diagraming (one in a series)
Diagraming Sentences

Thanks everybody for the helpful replies.

I'd better check our settings on Word - it seems to find spelling and verb agreement problems, but I'm not sure about run on sentences. Unfortunately, he still has to hand write most assignments at school, so this would only help with projects at home.

I like the idea of working on clause analysis with him. He is Mr. Logic, so this might help. He has done quite a lot of work on finding the subject/verb/direct object/indirect object, etc at school, but I don't think they related much to punctuation. He goes to a French school and the grammar is pretty rigorous (compared to what I remember of English school in the 1970s).

Last summer, he had a creative writing project that he was very motivated to do - I used the project to work on choosing the right place for periods, mostly by reading it aloud with him. I'm not sure it helped much. He is probably a bit weak on auditory, so maybe this wasn't the best approach. He also has always hated reading aloud, although has been a voracious silent reader from an early age.

When he first started to write, he didn't leave any spaces between words. He would write a page long story without a single space! Somehow this seems related . . .