Bike ride on the beach
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Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about punctuating direct speech.
While they were on holiday, Ruby and Tim went for a bike ride to the beach with their cousin, Melanie.
Read the speech bubbles on the following pages to see what they said to each other. Then drag the punctuation marks into the correct places in the sentences below the photos.
Hint: You may not need to fill every space with punctuation, and you may have some punctuation left over.
Task administration:
Students need to work with a partner to complete this task.
This task is for online use only. It is auto marked: students see their results at the end. Before doing this task, make sure students understand how to access punctuation on the keyboard. For example, they need to know how to type quotation marks, capital letters, commas, etc. Note that these symbols may be accessed in different ways, depending on the device being used.
The task asks students to drag speech marks, commas, and full stops into place to show where passages of direct speech begin and end. Possible locations for the punctuation marks are indicated by small empty boxes. Before they begin the task, remind students that not all the locations are correct, and that they might have some punctuation marks or empty boxes left over.
The last part of the task asks students to write a short conversation, based on the characters in a photograph. They work collaboratively with a partner to extend the conversation and to check their punctuation.
Copyright:
Images purchased from Dreamstime.
Levels:
3, 4
Curriculum info:
Key Competencies:
Keywords:
Description of task:
This focus of this resource is punctuating direct speech. Students drag speech marks, commas, and full stops into place to show where direct speech begins and ends. The resource ends with a collaborative writing activity. Students work with a partner to create and punctuate a conversation based on the characters in a photograph.
Curriculum Links:
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions
This resource helps to identify students' ability to
- Use basic punctuation that is correct or mostly correct (e.g., when punctuating dialogue)
as described in the Literacy Learning Progressions for Writing at http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progress...
Learning Progression Frameworks
This resource can provide evidence of learning associated with within the Writing Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.Teaching and learning:
This resource was piloted and trialled with groups of Year 7 and Year 8 students.
In the pilot groups, students differed in their ability to use a keyboard to enter text. Some had difficulty with finding speech marks, capital letters, exclamation marks, or other symbols on the keyboard. It would be helpful for students to be familiar with finding these and other symbols on the keyboard prior to completing this activity. As keyboards differ between devices, it is also important that students are familiar with creating text on the device they will use to complete the resource.
Diagnostic and formative information:
Each comma, full stop, or speech mark dragged into place by the student was marked either correct or incorrect. To be marked as correct, the speech marks needed to be:
- in the correct place
- in the correct form: either opening (“) or closing (”).
About 25% of students made only one error in placing a punctuation mark.
Around 50% of students made either two or three errors in placing punctuation marks. For these students, the majority of errors were in using commas and full stops correctly to punctuate direct speech.
Around 25% of students made more than 6 errors in placing punctuation marks. These students had difficulty with placing speech marks correctly to identify words of direct speech, and in using commas and full stops to punctuate direct speech correctly.
In the collaborative writing task, students had no trouble in identifying where their characters’ speech began and ended, and used speech marks correctly to indicate this. However, other punctuation associated with direct speech was commonly used incorrectly or missing. For example, the majority of students didn’t use a new line to indicate a new speaker, or use commas correctly to introduce or close direct speech. Other common punctuation errors were lack of capital letters and full stops.
Next steps:
| Learners | Next steps |
| Learners who are able to place opening and closing speech marks correctly to identify direct speech, but have problems with commas and full stops. | Practise punctuating direct speech (see the 'four rules' below). Work through rules 2-4, one by one. |
| Learners who have problems placing speech marks |
Practise identifying direct speech and using opening and closing speech marks. You can do this by writing some simple sentences that include direct speech, and making simple drawings of the people involved. Work with learners to transfer the words that were actually spoken to a speech bubble above the relevant drawing.
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Identifying direct speech
There are two main ways of writing about what someone said: direct speech and indirect (or reported) speech.
Direct speech
In direct speech, we tell our readers what a person said, using the speaker’s voice/exact words and enclosing them with speech marks.
For example,
Anahera said, “I got some new red shoes on Saturday.”
or
“I love my new red shoes,” said Anahera. “I got them on Saturday.”
We help the reader see which words the speaker actually said, by enclosing them with speech marks to show where the words begin and end. This is like using quotation marks to indicate where we have used someone else’s words.
Indirect speech
In indirect (reported) speech, we tell our readers what a person said, using our own voice/words.
For example:
Anahera said that she got some new red shoes on Saturday.
or
Anahera said that she loves the new red shoes that she got on Saturday.
Indirect speech does not need speech marks, because we are using our own words, rather than quoting what the person said.
To practise identifying direct and indirect speech, collect some examples of direct speech, then work with students to rewrite them as indirect speech. Then collect some examples of indirect speech and rewrite them as direct speech. Novels, picture books or comic strips are good sources of direct speech.
Punctuating direct speech
There are four main rules to remember when punctuating direct speech. A good way to start or to reinforce learning them is to look at examples of direct speech in novels. Notice the different features and how the author uses them to show the reader who is speaking and what they say.
For example:
“Hello!” exclaimed John. “What are you doing here?”
Jane replied, “I’m going up to Auckland to see my mum. She’s not been well lately and I need to catch up with her.”
“What time’s your bus?” said John.
“It leaves in half an hour. I’m going to grab a coffee before we leave. Do you want to join me?”
“Sorry,” replied John, “I’d love to, but I’m off to work and my bus is due any minute. Have a great trip though!”
Use this example of dialogue (or better still, find a passage from a favourite novel), to identify instances of the following rules.
- Use speech marks (correctly called ‘inverted commas’) to enclose the words that a person actually said.
- Start a new line each time the speaker changes to a new person. This helps the reader keep track of the conversation and who is saying what.
- Use either a comma, a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark at the end of the person’s speech. It should go inside the closing speech marks.
- Use a comma to join the information about who is speaking (John replied,) and the words that they say (“I’m going up to Auckland to see my mum.”).