Description
What our Commas in Dates and Series lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Commas in Dates and Series teaches students the proper ways to use commas when writing dates or series. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to use commas in dates and to separate single words in a series. This lesson is for students in 1st grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the orange box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson are scissors, paper, and the handouts. To prepare for this lesson ahead of time, you can pair the students for the activity, gather the supplies, and copy the handouts.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. The first optional adjustment is for the activity worksheet, and suggests that you can complete the activity together as a class. You can have students use their current reading material to practice identifying the use of commas in series or with dates (they can also create a list of their uses).
You could also hold a “Comma Bee” where students identify the word or where where the commas should be placed after. Another optional addition to the lesson is to have students create 10 sentences with no commas, and then have another student correct it by adding commas where needed. Finally, you can have students create a poster that shows the proper use of commas in dates and in a series of words or phrases.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. It notes that students might already know how to use commas in text, but might not know how to use them in this specific application. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
COMMAS IN DATES AND SERIES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Commas with Dates
The Commas in Dates and Series lesson plan includes two content pages. The lesson begins by reminding students that commas tell you when to pause while reading. They’re like periods, but with a hook on it! Commas are punctuation marks that we use as a pause between sentences, items in a list, and in other places, like in dates.
We use dates in sentences, or alone in calendars, date books, or as part of other texts. Dates includes the month, the dat, and the year, and sometimes the day of the week as well! We use commas to separate the parts of the dates when both parts are either words or numbers.
The lesson then lists some correct and incorrect ways to use commas in specific situations. These situations are when the date is alone with the year; when the day and date are in a sentence; when a month, date, and year are included in a sentence; when the month, date, and year are in the beginning or middle of a sentence; and when the month and year are in a sentence and no commas is needed. It’s important to note that even though years are in the thousands, we don’t use commas as part of the year.
Commas in a Series
We also use commas to separate items in a series, like when you list items you would like to have for a birthday. In that case, you might write something like: I want my friends, games, cake, and ice cream. We use commas in between each item in that list. We only do this when a list has three or more items, and the last two are joined by the words and, or, or nor. Each item in the series can be either a single word or a phrase.
The lesson includes a chart that lists the incorrect and correct ways to use commas in a series in different situations. These include series of single words and series with groups of words or phrases.
COMMAS IN DATES AND SERIES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Commas in Dates and Series lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CREATING SENTENCES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work with a partner to complete this activity. They will first cut out the commas, periods, months, numbers, years, words, and phrases found on the worksheet page. They will then use these cutouts to create and write sentences on another sheet of paper. You can encourage students to be as silly as they’d like!
Students can work either alone or in larger groups if you’d prefer.
COMMAS IN DATES AND SERIES PRACTICE WORKSHEET
For the practice worksheet, students will complete two short exercises. The firsts asks them to read ten sentences and add commas as needed. The second asks them to write their own sentences using the provided dates or series of words.
ADD COMMAS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
The homework assignment asks students to read a paragraph and add commas as needed.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. No answer key is provided for the activity worksheet. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
