What is Sensei’s teaching challenge this week?

I thought that knowing how to use the comma was a given for my Year 1 students, but it turned out to be something novel for them. They had little understanding of how to use the comma.

As an eager teacher, I wanted to impart to them the finer points of punctuation. So, I diligently got them to write example sentences and patiently explained the usage to them. Unfortunately, my effort was a Big Bang failure. When I got them to do a worksheet, I was horrified to see that they had inserted the comma at random places.

As such, it was back to the drawing board for me. I needed to teach them how to use the comma in a different way. Leveraging my keen understanding of teenagers’ psyche, I decided to incorporate movement and visuals into the next lesson.

Movement and visuals sounds very bombastic, but it actually boiled down to simple things. I gave each student a piece of paper that had one written word and asked them to arrange the words (and themselves) in the right order. Then, I called upon other students, affectionately addressed as my Comma Specialist, to insert themselves in the right place.

https://m.stacker.news/42476

https://m.stacker.news/42477

Of course, the Comma Specialists got it wrong sometimes, but this just created an opportunity for me to address their misconception. Here is a photo of me declaring sagely to put a comma before “and” to separate a list of things.

https://m.stacker.news/42478

Through this exercise, I was able to impress upon them the importance of the comma. When we deliver a speech, we pause occasionally. A comma will signal to us to pause so that we create a break in our flow of words and facilitate our audience’s listening. I hope that they will learn to use commas a a tool to help them catch their breath while speaking - just like how inhaling becomes important during swimming.

In addition, they learnt how to write the introduction for their presentation script.

Good morning, teacher and friends. I’m X from Y. These are my group members, A, B and C. Today, we will present about our favourite dish.