A grade two student completed this piece of writing; the prompt they were given was in relation to travelling.Â
 The writing piece should read:Â
 One day, Rupert and Liam found out that they had been given a dog, but it was in Scotland. So they quickly got on the computer to buy tickets, but there were no tickets left. They had a look at another site, but still no tickets. They could not find any, and they thought about why there were no tickets left. It was because the football was on. So they had a look to see if there were any tickets available for boats. They had a look online and found two tickets spare. The next day they were getting on the boat, so they got packing. Rupert and Liam finally made it on the boat, and were about to dock. They could see Liam’s mum with a dog, and Liam decided to call him Milo. Liam and Rupert loved having Milo in the house.Â
It is clear that this child has a lacking in his writing conventions. The text above has multiple spelling errors, all of which appear to be phonetically spelt out. There was no punctuation used; with only one full stop in the entire piece. Capital letters were not used at the start of a sentence, and this relates back to the lacking full stops, because without one, it’s hard to remember to add the other. Even naming the dog, lacked a capital letter.Â
In order to better their writing, this child requires practice in looking at a sentence, or a paragraph, and inserting the correct punctuation and need for capital letters. The poster attached shows a paragraph with missing punctuation and capital letters. This is a prompt to get children to double check their writing, looking for places where they may have missed a capital letter, or a full stop. Although there is no incorrectly spelt words in the poster, it should also remind them to check their spelling before bringing it up for correction. Proof reading and editing is an important component in improving writing ability
The poster reads:
the little boy played in the mud with his dog fluffy they left muddy footprints all through the house his parents were very disappointed
These sentences are missing some capital letters, full stops and commas. Can you figure out how the sentences should be written?
Remember: every sentence begins with a capital letter, and when you finish a sentence there should always be a full stop. Names of people and places also require a capital letter, for example: New York.
