Semicolons for K-3

[Hunter]

How do you address semicolons for K-3? When using older literature and the KJV Bible they are used a lot. It's not so much a problem when just using newer literature.

 

I have yet to see a curriculum that teaches semicolons to K-3, but KJV and literature based curricula, use them as copywork. I'm reading through a first edition copy of LLATL Red and there is the Mother Goose poem

 

One, two, buckle my shoe;

 

And there is no mention of semicolons, but a lesson on commas. The idea of OCD me teaching this to an OCD student gives me heart palpatations.

[wendyroo]

Semicolons are easy; they are even easier if you just did a lesson on commas.

 

A comma connects two independent clauses (complete sentences), but you need to use a conjunction.

 

A semicolon also connects two independent clauses; when connecting with semicolons you do not add a conjunction.

 

So, I start by showing two short sentences:

 

I went to the store today.  I did not buy anything.

 

Now decide what conjunction you would add to connect them with a comma:

 

I went to the store today, but I did not buy anything.

 

Now connect the two sentences with a semicolon and no conjunction:

 

I went to the store today; I did not buy anything.

 

Introduce the idea that we can only connect two ideas with a semicolon if there is a clear connection between them.

 

Offer another two sentences as an example:

 

My room is yellow.  Mike likes to eat pizza.

 

No semicolon for those ideas.

 

 

Hope that helps,

Wendy

 

 

 

[73349]

I would explain what they are if we came across one. They're very helpful for those long lists of cities and states/countries as well.

 

I would not expect the child to use them successfully before I taught about clauses.

[forty-two]

I explained it as a medium pause, with a comma being a small pause, and a period being a big pause (and a paragraph break being an even bigger pause). I know, not much of an explanation, but enough for reading aloud and copywork, for dd7.5 anyway. Eta: I do think I included the basic idea that the length of the pause has to do with how connected the ideas are - longer the pause, the more separate the thoughts. Idk, I think it's a good enough explanation to be getting on with, and gives a decent enough foundation for more formal grammar knowledge down the road.

[Hunter]

I explained it as a medium pause, with a comma being a small pause, and a period being a big pause (and a paragraph break being an even bigger pause). I know, not much of an explanation, but enough for reading aloud and copywork, for dd7.5 anyway. Eta: I do think I included the basic idea that the length of the pause has to do with how connected the ideas are - longer the pause, the more separate the thoughts. Idk, I think it's a good enough explanation to be getting on with, and gives a decent enough foundation for more formal grammar knowledge down the road.

Thank you for this. I think everyone is so afraid to introduce them, that we do students a disfavor. I, too, was thinking about length of pause and how connected the sentence are. I just don't think I want to introduce clauses, yet.

 

There is just no way to use the KJV and pre-1900's literature as copywork and dictation without explicitly teaching SOMETHING about semi-colons. Or we need to rewrite the copywork not to include them. I don't mind rewriting Mother Goose, but would rather not do that with the KJV.

 

There is this:

http://www.eyedocgreg.com/homeschool/english_rules.htm

7. Use a semi-colon in a compound sentence without a connector.

Ben brought an umbrella; he was hoping for rain.

[Farrar]

I think it's fine to mention things and say what they do but not overtly teach them for usage yet.

[Hunter]

I'm fine with teaching something that students are not expected to USE, but I feel like I need a clear and concise explanation, instead of saying a LOT of vague things.

 

We start off saying a noun is a person, place, or thing, even though it's a LOT more complicated than that. But we all say the same thing to the beginners, and are comfortable saying it to them.

 

I'm just hoping there is a curriculum, or someone here, that has come up with a "wrong" but usable beginner explanation, good enough for copywork and dictation.

[forty-two]

I'm fine with teaching something that students are not expected to USE, but I feel like I need a clear and concise explanation, instead of saying a LOT of vague things.

 

We start off saying a noun is a person, place, or thing, even though it's a LOT more complicated than that. But we all say the same thing to the beginners, and are comfortable saying it to them.

 

I'm just hoping there is a curriculum, or someone here, that has come up with a "wrong" but usable beginner explanation, good enough for copywork and dictation.

Peter Elbow has a book, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, that has a few chapters on punctuating by ear. I wonder if he might have some helpful guidelines there - will try to look later tonight.

 

I know that I got my "pauses" idea from something I saw online (that was about teaching kids grammar) - will see if I can remember where.

[Hunter]

Yes, I have read a few books about punctuating by ear. Even if I prefer to teach punctuation in GENERAL with explicit rules, this might be a place to do something a little different.

 

Maybe that is the problem. Explicit rule teachers would have a hard time switching up for just this one rule for K-3 and would find it easier to remain silent.

 

I have some students that respond SO well to KJV based language arts lessons though, and there is no way to avoid the semicolon with the KJV.

 

I'd like to settle on a rule, and refine it bit by bit, and just get comfortable flashing it along with other beginner mechanics rules. Something for the beginners to hang onto, if they are repeatedly seeing it each and every day.

[forty-two]

I punctuate (and write) purely by ear - never learned any rules. And when I started learning about classical education, I embraced the idea of learning the rules wholeheartedly, because I felt all the disadvantages of only having intuition to guide me. But after a while, I came to see that having a intuitive sense of language was *important* - that rules without intuition was just as limiting as intuition without rules (or even more so, in some cases), and that I had seriously underestimated the value of what I already had. I'm still "yea, explicit formal knowledge!", but I'm equally, "go intuitive informal knowledge!" And I'm becoming increasingly "intuitive knowledge first" and "root all explicit rules in intuitive understanding" - avoid any hint of a divide between "school knowledge" and "common sense".

 

Did a bit of research, and looks like punctuation-as-pauses is the "old" approach, from Ancient Greece to the 1700s - point of punctuation was to guide the reader in reading aloud. 18th and 19th centuries saw a transition from punctuation-as-pauses to a syntax-centered approach, which is the dominant method today. There were various "systems" taught for length of pauses, but all were in the order (shortest to longest): comma, semi-colon, colon, period.

 

Anyway, there's an interesting approach in Nitty-Gritty Grammar, related to the pause approach, with a bit of syntax-y-ness thrown in:

 

Period = Stop Sign: Come to a full stop. Then go on -- no sliding through. Signals the end of a complete thought.

Comma = Flashing Yellow Light: Slow down, look left and right, then continue. Signals a pause in the action.

Semi-Colon = Flashing Red Light: Stop briefly; then forge ahead. Connects two related complete thoughts closer than a period would; separates related thoughts more than a comma would.

Colon = Arrow or Road Sign: Listen Up! What follows explains or adds information.

Parentheses and Dashes = Detour: Take a quick detour -- then proceed. They add extra information or show a break in thought.

[fourisenough]

I punctuate (and write) purely by ear - never learned any rules. And when I started learning about classical education, I embraced the idea of learning the rules wholeheartedly, because I felt all the disadvantages of only having intuition to guide me. But after a while, I came to see that having a intuitive sense of language was *important* - that rules without intuition was just as limiting as intuition without rules (or even more so, in some cases), and that I had seriously underestimated the value of what I already had. I'm still "yea, explicit formal knowledge!", but I'm equally, "go intuitive informal knowledge!" And I'm becoming increasingly "intuitive knowledge first" and "root all explicit rules in intuitive understanding" - avoid any hint of a divide between "school knowledge" and "common sense".

 

Did a bit of research, and looks like punctuation-as-pauses is the "old" approach, from Ancient Greece to the 1700s - point of punctuation was to guide the reader in reading aloud. 18th and 19th centuries saw a transition from punctuation-as-pauses to a syntax-centered approach, which is the dominant method today. There were various "systems" taught for length of pauses, but all were in the order (shortest to longest): comma, semi-colon, colon, period.

 

Anyway, there's an interesting approach in Nitty-Gritty Grammar, related to the pause approach, with a bit of syntax-y-ness thrown in:

 

Period = Stop Sign: Come to a full stop. Then go on -- no sliding through. Signals the end of a complete thought.

Comma = Flashing Yellow Light: Slow down, look left and right, then continue. Signals a pause in the action.

Semi-Colon = Flashing Red Light: Stop briefly; then forge ahead. Connects two related complete thoughts closer than a period would; separates related thoughts more than a comma would.

Colon = Arrow or Road Sign: Listen Up! What follows explains or adds information.

Parentheses and Dashes = Detour: Take a quick detour -- then proceed. They add extra information or show a break in thought.

I love this. We've just finished JAG Mechanics, so I've taught the explicit rules (though it does not introduce colons or semi-colons), but I see value in using this explanation to fill out the big picture.

[Pen]

They have 3 main uses: linking independent clauses without use of coordinating conjunctions (e.g. and, but), linking independent clauses joined by a conjunctive adjective (e.g. thus, however), and separating series of items where one would normally use a comma, but because there are already commas in the items to be separated, it would be confusing.  I think if you assign copywork that has semicolons you could explain what it is doing in the sentence, since it will almost always be one of those three.

 

 

I think Wendy explained the first situation very well.   

 

And example of the second would be a sentence like this one; however, I am stumped to think of anything very useful.

 

As for the last, consider a meeting attended by John Jones, Vice-President of Marketing; Sarah Smith, Chief Executive Officer; Pamela Park, V.P. of Sales; and Misha Mott, V.P. of R and D.    

[silver]

I don't think a student has to have mastery of punctuation in their own writing in order to have it in copy work. When there is punctuation that my son doesn't know how to use yet, I point the punctuation out to him before he starts (so that he doesn't skip over it) and he copies it.

 

It's like contractions: my son uses contractions in his daily speech and he can read and understand contractions in books, but when we did an exercise of splitting contractions up into their two parts, it was difficult for him. Just because he doesn't have 100% understanding of contractions doesn't mean he can't use it in speech, see it in reading, and have it in copy work (although I'm guessing it's not very common in copy work, given the casual nature of contractions). I wouldn't expect him to spell a contraction correctly on his own, but I don't see the need to avoid them in everything else until he can spell them correctly. Likewise, I wouldn't expect 1st graders to use a semi-colon properly in their own writing, but that shouldn't stop them from reading and copying sentences that use them.

[Hunter]

I punctuate (and write) purely by ear - never learned any rules. And when I started learning about classical education, I embraced the idea of learning the rules wholeheartedly, because I felt all the disadvantages of only having intuition to guide me. But after a while, I came to see that having a intuitive sense of language was *important* - that rules without intuition was just as limiting as intuition without rules (or even more so, in some cases), and that I had seriously underestimated the value of what I already had. I'm still "yea, explicit formal knowledge!", but I'm equally, "go intuitive informal knowledge!" And I'm becoming increasingly "intuitive knowledge first" and "root all explicit rules in intuitive understanding" - avoid any hint of a divide between "school knowledge" and "common sense".

 

Did a bit of research, and looks like punctuation-as-pauses is the "old" approach, from Ancient Greece to the 1700s - point of punctuation was to guide the reader in reading aloud. 18th and 19th centuries saw a transition from punctuation-as-pauses to a syntax-centered approach, which is the dominant method today. There were various "systems" taught for length of pauses, but all were in the order (shortest to longest): comma, semi-colon, colon, period.

 

Anyway, there's an interesting approach in Nitty-Gritty Grammar, related to the pause approach, with a bit of syntax-y-ness thrown in:

 

Period = Stop Sign: Come to a full stop. Then go on -- no sliding through. Signals the end of a complete thought.

Comma = Flashing Yellow Light: Slow down, look left and right, then continue. Signals a pause in the action.

Semi-Colon = Flashing Red Light: Stop briefly; then forge ahead. Connects two related complete thoughts closer than a period would; separates related thoughts more than a comma would.

Colon = Arrow or Road Sign: Listen Up! What follows explains or adds information.

Parentheses and Dashes = Detour: Take a quick detour -- then proceed. They add extra information or show a break in thought.

Thank you so much for this! With composition, I have come to a similar conclusion, that I need to first teach a looser common sense approach BEFORE explicit and sometimes limiting rules. I had a reluctant writer who could at least write a Birthday card, go BACKWARDS in writing until she could no longer even write a birthday card without help, after months of explicit composition lessons.

 

I'm going to create a poster for this. Thanks again! You helped with more than semi-colons.

 

I read another older source that said to teach external punctuation before internal punctuation, and that helped me, too. So I think I will focus on semi-colons that act as an alternative for external punctuation.

[Crimson Wife]

They are in one of the MCT books. After learning about them in MCT, my DS overused them to the point where I had to out right BAN them from his writing. His big sister pointed out that I don't have such a ban for her. I told her that was because she had the sense to only use them when it was appropriate to do so!

[Miss Tick]

Wait! Before you create a poster, the website "The Oatmeal" has a poster that that covers semi colon use. Preview it. Their stuff is funny, but not always, perhaps rarely, appropriate for the K-3 set.

[Hunter]

Wait! Before you create a poster, the website "The Oatmeal" has a poster that that covers semi colon use. Preview it. Their stuff is funny, but not always, perhaps rarely, appropriate for the K-3 set.

 

Here's the link; cute.

 

Is that an example of overuse of the semicolon, Crimson Wife? :lol: I use semicolons and dashes far more than the average person.

 

Crimson Wife, don't use the KJV with your son. There is a semicolon in almost every verse.