R ANDY L ARSON Teaching the Boring Stuff Series Commas is one of the first books in the new “Teaching the Boring Stuff ” series. With short, easy-to-digest activities that have a sense of humor, students learn to use commas correctly. At the same time, they also learn a great deal about sentence structure. No, this is not another book of dull drills. Commas presents material in an interesting way, using language that makes sense to kids. Best of all, it has students using what they learn. Choose activities from the book here and there, as you see a need. Or use them once or twice a week to build skills throughout the school year. Either way, the review exercises will help reinforce what students learn — and help them perform better on assessment tests as well. Teaching the Boring Stuff Series Teaching students to use commas correctly, without boring them to tears “In a job-shadowing summer training seminar for high school teachers, I was asked to do staff development with company CEOs. We used COMMAS. The CEOs laughed, they learned, and they loved it! (I was asked to do it again next year, too!)” R ANDY L ARSON —Wanda S. Caldwell Tuscola Senior High School Waynesville, North Carolina COTTONWOODPRESS, INC. I LLUSTRATED BY J UDY L ARSON Teaching the Boring Stuff Series COMMAS Teaching Students to Use Commas Correctly, Without Boring Them to Tears Randy Larson Illustrated by Judy Larson Cottonwood Press, Inc. Fort Collins, Colorado Copyright © 1999 by Cottonwood Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce activities in this book, in other than electronic form, for the purchaser’s own personal use in the classroom, provided that the copyright notice appears on each reproduction. Otherwise, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Cottonwood Press, Inc. Requests for permission should be addressed to: Cottonwood Press, Inc. 109-B Cameron Drive Fort Collins, Colorado 80525 E-mail:
[email protected] Web: www.cottonwoodpress.com Phone: 1-800-864-4297 Fax: 970-204-0761 Print ISBN-13: 978-1-877673-38-2 E-book ISBN: 978-1-936162-01-7 Printed in the United States of America T ABLE OF C ONTENTS How to Use this Book ....................................................................................................................5 Comma Short Course—The Basics in 12 Easy Lessons ............................................................7 Commas after introductory elements ..................................................................................8 Commas with interrupting elements ..................................................................................12 Commas with ending elements............................................................................................14 Commas in a series ................................................................................................................16 Commas in compound sentences ........................................................................................18 Commas in addresses, dates, titles and letters ..................................................................20 Commas with coordinate adjectives ..................................................................................28 Practice Exercises and Quizzes ..................................................................................................31 Commas after introductory elements ................................................................................32 Commas with interrupting elements ..