Practical Punctuation: Lessons on Rule Making and Rule Breaking in Elementary Writing (repost)

Punctuation is important. Period. Good writers know the rules, but skilled punctuators don't simply go by the conventions. They use punctuation to make meaning. Practical Punctuation shows you how to help students discover the relationship between punctuation and meaning - and how they can use it to improve their writing.

Practical Punctuation's strategies help writers connect periods, commas, and dashes to mood, emphasis, and rhythm. Dan Feigelson's ready-to-use lessons provide opportunities to:

• show students the purposes of punctuation before teaching them the rules
• give writers chances to experiment with punctuating
• model the thinking that goes into punctuating
• teach conventions explicitly, but not absolutely
• hold students accountable for punctuation in formal writing.

Feigelson's lessons are highly structured. They demonstrate how to teach punctuation as a craft tool with writers of varying sophistication or age:
• beginners: ending punctuation
• intermediate-stage writers: the comma
• advanced writers: internal punctuation and cadence.
Feigelson includes a handy teacher's reference guide to punctuation as well as grade-by-grade guidelines that make assessing punctuation simpler. And his interviews with world-renowned authors will help you and your writers better understand the power punctuation has to impart meaning.

Read Practical Punctuation and help students make choices with punctuation - instead of letting punctuation rules make choices for them.