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Teaching Punctuation: Seventh Graders, Mentor Texts, And Commas, Tara Berg, Ann M. Ellsworth

The Montana English Journal

In the middle grades, learning about writing mechanics often occurs through inauthentic language drills, which do not expose students to the practical and contextual implementation of punctuation and syntax. This study, conducted with seventeen seventh-grade students, explored how students can gain knowledge of basic conventions by reviewing the writing of a published author to observe the correct placement of punctuation. In this study, students, provided with excerpts from Tomie dePaola’s rendition of The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, were guided to discover how the author used commas to communicate with his readers. Subsequent to the lesson and to assess how …