Emphasizing Capitalization in the ESL Co-Taught Classroom
Teachers can get frustrated continually reviewing the importance of capitalization. Obviously, this concept appears in every sentence a student writes, and neglecting it creates glaringly bad writing. Despite teachers’ best efforts to encourage capitalization, students are exposed to bad grammar in social media, texting, and other informal methods of communication. This article will present a few ways to review capitalization.
The teacher can first present the video below to cover the basic rule that the first letter of a sentence should be capitalized.
After showing the video, the teacher shows sentences on the board with some having capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and some sentences without capital letters at the start of the sentence. After the teacher reads each sentence, the students write on their small white boards correct if the sentence already has a capital letter at the start, or the students write the first word of the sentence with a capital letter if the sentence on the board is incorrect.
The co-teacher not directing class observes to see how students answered, and he/she takes the students who did not answer correctly to a different section of the room to review capitalization at the start of a sentence. Some activities can include using magnetized letters to create sentences with capital letters and writing sentences with the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence written in colored pencil. The other co-teacher asks the class what else they know about capitalization and writes student responses on the board.
The class comes together again as one class, and the next video is shown. I helped in a first grade class, and the kids loved this song. I think my high school students would enjoy this song too. When it got to the chorus, all of the kids yelled “Capitalize!!”. It was a lot of fun. I even found myself bobbing my head to this song.
After watching the video, the class plays the stand up, sit down game. The teacher reads a sentence, and students stand up when they hear a word that needs to be capitalized. They then sit down when they hear the next word that should be capitalized. When the class differs in opinion, the teacher can explain. After playing the game for a while, students close their eyes while playing the game. The observing co-teacher keeps track of student responses and pulls students for alternative teaching after the game. The students who answered correctly work on the Flocabulary activities like creating a rap about capitalization.
The students who need more help can watch an informative and a funny video below:
The students who need more review can then work on the vocab cards and vocab game in Flocabulary.
Finally, the class comes together as a whole and listens to the students who created a capitalization rap.