Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Here is a lesson idea for teaching the importance of punctuation and putting punctuation in the right place within a sentence. Prier knowledge students will need is basic punctuation use, such as capital letters, full stops, commas, question marks, explanation marks and speech marks. This lesson is based on the book 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. This book shows how a sentence meaning changes when punctuation marks are placed in it, removed or placed in different parts of the sentences. It approaches this with humorous images displaying the differences between two sentences with different punctuation. For example:

Let’s eat, grandma.

Let’s eat grandma.

Before reading the book to your class I suggest recapping the varies punctuation marks and what they are used for, you could get your students to add punctuation to un-punctuated sentences (they could create their own un-punctuated sentences for their peer to punctuate). While reading the book their is opportunity to discuss the differences between the two sentences and how the meaning has changed due to the punctuation marks.

After reading the book to your students here is a follow up activity idea:

Giving students sets of sentences with different punctuation for them to draw an image of their own to represent the differences. This could then be used to create a school book.

Example sentence:

Slow, children crossing.

Slow children crossing.

“Where do you think we’re taking you? To the dungeon?”

“Where do you think? We’re taking you to the dungeon?”

“The student”, said the teacher, “is crazy.”

The student said, “the teacher is crazy.”

The giant kids playground.

The giant kids, playground.

Giant moving sale Friday.

Giant moving, sale Friday.

How many shoes do you need?

How many shoes do you need!

The queen without her dinner is noisy.

The queen, without her, dinner is noisy.

The king walked and talked. Half an hour after, his head was cut off!

The king walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off!

Resources needed:

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss