first grade grammar help

[mhaddon]

My little sister is in first grade. She has recently started having trouble with grammar. More so with punctuation. My step-mom would love something easy to give her more practice in this area to bring her back up and help before she is behind. (She is in public school). She knows I home school and thought I'd know of something, but we just started this year and my son is in kindergarten so I'm not sure where to direct her. Thanks!

[krismoose]

Hi! Can you give some examples of what kind of troubles she's having?

[mhaddon]

She is not understanding period, comma, and punctuation use. They started the exclamation point and she really started to struggle.

[Whereneverever]

Growing with grammar.

[Ellie]

She is not understanding period, comma, and punctuation use. They started the exclamation point and she really started to struggle.

I would expect a 6yo to not completely understand end punctuation. I would also expect there to be some time when it seems as if she's "struggling," but rather than doing something different at home with her, seems to me it would be more effective to (1) not categorize her mistakes as "struggling" but rather as part of the process lof earning something she hasn't mastered yet, and (2) reinforce how the teacher is presenting/teaching in class by going over any papers with your sister at home, and gently reminding her of correct usage when she writes at home ("Dear, remember that we have to have something at the end of a sentence.")

 

Your sister will be learning and using punctuation daily for the next 12 years. She can't possibly be "behind" yet. :-)

[Haiku]

Evan-Moor has great stuff.

 

Tara

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

I would expect a 6yo to not completely understand end punctuation. I would also expect there to be some time when it seems as if she's "struggling," but rather than doing something different at home with her, seems to me it would be more effective to (1) not categorize her mistakes as "struggling" but rather as part of the process lof earning something she hasn't mastered yet, and (2) reinforce how the teacher is presenting/teaching in class by going over any papers with your sister at home, and gently reminding her of correct usage when she writes at home ("Dear, remember that we have to have something at the end of a sentence.")

 

Your sister will be learning and using punctuation daily for the next 12 years. She can't possibly be "behind" yet. :-)

:iagree:

[boscopup]

At first grade, you're still having to deal with "write your name with lowercase letters after the first letter" (my son *finally* is doing that consistently now). I wouldn't expect perfect use of punctuation quite yet. ;) I don't think they've even introduced commas in my son's school yet. He's done periods, exclamation points, and question marks. He doesn't write a lot of original sentences, but he usually remembers that a period goes at the end of a sentence (I think that's been drilled into him). I don't think he's written any questions or exclamatory sentences on his own, so I don't know if he'd know when to use them? I really don't expect him to fully understand that stuff yet in first grade though. In fact, when we start homeschooling next semester, we won't be doing grammar at all. I'm just going to start R&S in grade 2.

 

Anyway, I'd suggest talking to the teacher to see if she can explain the punctuation in a different manner. If one kid doesn't get it, chances are, others aren't getting it either. Sometimes it just needs to be gone over again. I know my son's teacher has done that when she's been alerted to problems like this.