Lesson Plan Title : Comma Craziness

Age Range: Grade 6 through grade 8 (Middle School Level)

Overview and Purpose : Commas can be very difficult to use correctly. Many people do not use enough of them and, occasionally, some people use too many. This exercise will help your students as they compete to see who has the most commas placed correctly.

Objective: The student will be able to use commas correctly in a sentence.

Resources:

Teacher created paragraph that needs several commas inserted into it.

Activities:

Have the students work with a partner to complete this activity. Pass out the worksheet that has too many commas. Tell the students how many extra commas there are and give them time to cross them out. When everyone is finished, review the paragraph as a class. Talk about each comma and why it is needed or not needed. Have the students mark any mistakes they made.

Now have the teams create their own paragraphs using too many commas. Have them make an answer key for their paragraph. Review their keys and help each group with any errors. When the answer keys are correct, have the groups trade papers. After one group has completed another group's paragraph, have them check it using the answer key.

Closure:

Depending on the make-up of your class, you may want to do a paragraph as a class first. This will give the students a chance to review the rules and to see some of the common ways commas are misused.