Creative Cooperative is a UK blog founded by Tom Ralis, which
encourages creative teaching and active learning through the sharing of ideas. This style of teaching aims to engage and energise pupils using hands-on, physical tasks that make teaching and learning fun!
In this blog post, he outlines
- the idea of having children move "up" the ladder of punctuation mastery, just as martial artists do in earning different colored belts
- the idea of teaching children to use martial arts moves to demonstrate specific punctuation and proofreaders' marks.
White = .
Yellow . ,
Orange . , ? !
Purple . , ? ! “ ”
Blue . , ? ! “ ” … ( )
Green . , ? ! “ ” … ( ) - ’
Brown . , ? ! “ ” … ( ) - ’ :
Black . , ? ! “ ” … ( ) - ’ : ;
I ran across the idea at Betul and Ann's Dyslexia Blog, who elaborate the background and outline the various moves.
Here's their descriptions, presented in Tom's teaching order. They are drawn from Phil Beadle's Could Do Better: Helping Your Kid Shine at School
- Period or full stop: . throw a short, right-handed punch at the air in front of you. Make the noise, Ha!
- Comma , with your right arm bent so that your hand is in front of your face, make a short twisting motion at the wrist to signify the comma shape. Make the noise, Shi!
- Question mark : ? separate the curly bit into three cutting movements with the hand: one horizontal left to right, one curved around, and one vertical coming from the bottom of the curved one. Then at the bottom of the shape you have just drawn in the air, bung in a full-stop punch. Make the noises, Shi! Shi! Shi! Ha!
- Exclamation mark : !! a long vertical slash, from top to bottom, followed by a full stop. Make the noises, Shiiiiii! Ha!
- Quotation marks (speech marks): “ " stand on one leg, extend your arms diagonally to the skies and wiggle your index and middle fingers in an approximation of speech marks. Make the noise, Haeeeee!
- Ellipsis: … three punches along a horizontal line. Make the noises, Ha! Ha! Ha!
- Parentheses (Brackets) ( ) : using your left hand first, draw a curved convex line in the air; use your right hand to do the opposite motion for the closing bracket. Make the noises, Shi! Shi!
- Hyphen (not on the list)
- Apostrophe: ‘ with your right arm fully extended to the air, wiggle your index finger. Make the noise, Blubalubaluba! (This is the best I can do to approximate the sound you can make with your tongue when you flap it up and down against the inside of your lips.)
- Semi-colon: ; do the full-stop punch, then the comma shape directly underneath it. Make the noises, Ha! Shi!
- Colon : follow the full-stop punch immediately with one directly beneath it. Make the noises, Ha! Ha!
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