Simple definition strategy
Makes correct punctuation do-able
Teachers shouldn't correct students' errors in grammar and punctuation.
Students should make their own corrections.
Teachers can, however, help students by giving them a carefully
phrased checklist of punctuation errors and common grammar mistakes
students can look for in their own writing.
Prerequisites
For this trick to work, you must
-
Identify a few frequent errors in student writing that
you want students to eliminate by year's end.
-
Flag those errors any time they appear in students' final
drafts.
-
Penalize students' grades when the errors appear in their
final drafts.
-
Teach the relevant grammar and punctuation rules
of many times, many ways.

Define your standards
Define correct punctuation and each of your other standards of
writing mechanics in terms of
Let me give you an example of how the trick works.
Let's one of your annual goals is
Students capitalize the first
word of each sentence.
When you see a word group between periods or other ending punctuation
in a student paper, you ask, "Did the student capitalize the
first word of this sentence?"
The answer is either yes or no.
You can count the number of times the student did capitalize the
first word of the sentence and the number of times the student did
not.
Unhelpful mechanics standards
What usually happens is that teachers have an objective such as
Students will
use commas correctly.
That objective is too broad to be useful to either the teacher
of the students.
If you ask, "Did the student use commas correctly?" the
answer might be, "Some rules were used correctly some times."
Unless you specify which comma rules you want students to use correctly,
you can't count the number of times the student applied the rule
correctly and the number of times the student didn't.
What's worse is that you can't tell Joshua to correct his work
to make sure he uses commas correctly because he won't know which
of the 187 million comma rules (Josh's estimate) to apply.
Helpful punctuation standards
On the other hand, if your goal is that
Students will put a comma between the
clauses of a compound sentence.
you make it possible for Josh to determine whether he did or did
not correctly place a comma within a compound sentence.
Additional benefits
Phrasing your writing mechancs issues using this simple trick has
several benefits.
-
Students can review and edit their drafts to correct
punctuation and grammar mistakes.
-
Students can track how often they make a particular
error in each writing assignment.
-
Students see how mastering a rule improves their grades.
If you define your mechanical issues using this simple trick, you'll
make grading papers easier for yourself.
You will also simplify teaching. Since using
correct punctuation depends on knowing correct grammar, the
list of rules you develop for punctuation will help you zero in
on the most impotant grammar to teach student writers.
created 28-Oct-2008; updated 30-Oct-2008