At Grade 1 level, children learn to use punctuation marks with the basic process of creating a simple sentence and including a piece of sentence-ending punctuation, such as a period, question mark and exclamation point. In this article, we’ll take you through each of these first-grade concepts and provide some practice tips for you to try with your child.
What Is Punctuation?
Punctuation is a name for the marks we use to make our writing clear.
Periods, question marks, and exclamation points are punctuation that mark the end of a sentence. A sentence tells a complete thought.
THE PERIOD .
A period marks the end of a statement. A statement is a sentence that tells you something. Learn about statements in our lessons. Practise putting periods at the end of sentences in one of our fun challenges!
Practice Tip: Challenge your child to unscramble sentences ensuring the punctuation is placed in the correct position.
QUESTION MARK ?
When a sentence asks something, it should end with a question mark.
We often use these words to begin a question. These sentences are missing end punctuation! Could you feed the worms to the correct guglum?
EXCLAMATION POINT !
When a sentence shows a strong feeling, it's called an exclamation. An exclamation sentence ends with an exclamation point.
Practice tip: Practise writing exclamations in the nightzookeeper.com lesson series about punctuation.
COMMAS ,
The comma is a punctuation mark that we use to separate numbers and words.
In first grade, children learn how to use a comma to separate the date and the year. The comma shows us where the date ends and the year begins.
- September 1, 2021
The comma can also be used to separate items in a list. Children may practice writing sentences just like this when in 1st Grade:
- Night Zookeeper Will wears a hat, coat, and tie.
How Night Zookeeper can help
The Night Zookeeper program contains a variety of games and activities that require children to use excellent punctuation. There’s instant feedback available on our writing tools so that children are prompted to add punctuation marks in the correct position. They will also be able to complete specific lesson series that focus on the correct use of varied punctuation.
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