Teaching students to write sentences is a challenging task. It is one thing for them to write their thoughts down on paper, and it is another thing for them to write legibly, remember finger space, and punctuation. I am excited to share a couple tips to remind students to use a finger space and to remember to add a period!
I find that when I'm teaching writing and I bring fun, new materials into the classroom the students get excited to write their own sentences. For this writing lesson we are using a cat theme! These pencils are perfect to get the students excited to write. I find that when I change something as simple as the writing utensil, it really motivates them to do their best printing.
For this lesson, one of the main objectives is for the students to use appropriate finger space between words. These cat finger puppets are perfect for the students to keep on their "non writing hand" to use as a spacer between words! How this works is the students write one word, then put the cat spacer down to create space, and then they write the next word and keep repeating until their sentence is complete.
The second objective of this lesson is for the students to remember a period at the end of the sentence. I don't know why, but it is so challenging to get kindergarten students to remember a period! These paw print stickers are a great visual and incentive for them to use as their period! Another way that I use stickers during writing is if they remember to write a period, then they get a sticker on their paper.
I hope these simple ideas can encourage your students to use a finger space and to remember a period at the end!