The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Appendix · Part 2: Part Second

132. Review: the rules of punctuation and capitals

Goal: Your child uses the book's summary of rules to check and correct their own writing.

⏱ About 35 minutes · 6 steps

Open it at the Internet Archive ↗ 🖨 Copywork sheet

You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • Paper and pencil (a notebook kept just for this book works well)
  • Two or three pieces your child wrote earlier in the year

What's in the book

The Appendix on pages 315 and 316 summarizes the rules for capital letters and for every mark of punctuation: period, interrogation point, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, quotation marks, apostrophe and hyphen. The book says it is meant for reference.

The lesson, step by step

  1. Read the capital rules

    Read the five rules for capital letters together.

    The interjection O and the pronoun I are always written in capitals.

    For each, your child gives an example from memory.

  2. Read the punctuation rules

    Read the rules for marks of punctuation. The semicolon, colon and dash were not taught in the lessons; read those rules and look for an example in a book together.

  3. Check an old piece

    Your child takes a piece they wrote early in the year and checks it with the Appendix, rule by rule. They mark and fix what they find. Celebrate how much easier it is now.

  4. A final piece

    Your child writes a letter of 10 to 15 sentences to someone in the family, telling what they learned from this book and which lesson they liked best.

  5. Check it gently, one last time

    Your child checks their own letter with the Appendix before you read it. Then you name two things done well and one thing to keep working on.

  6. What a good result looks like

    Example (written for this guide, not from the book):

    Dear Grandpa,

    This year I finished a whole book about speaking and writing English. Now I know where to put commas and quotation marks, and I can tell a noun from a verb. My favorite lesson was the Mad Tea Party, because we read it like a play. ...

    Your loving grandson,

    Sam.

Afterwards

Keep the Appendix handy as a checklist for all future writing.

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