Descriptosaurus Punctuation in Action Years 4-6: Jack and the Crystal Fang

by Alison Wilcox

Overview

The only cure for a deadly plague sweeping the country is the crystal fang of a dragon that has terrorised the surrounding countryside for many years. Until now, the location of its den on Dragon Ridge Mountain has remained a mystery. In a race against time, Jack battles through a storm to reach the top of Dragon Ridge Mountain. With Merlin to guide him, Jack enters the dragon’s den and comes face to face with the monstrous beast. This is a story of courage, magic and one boy’s brave quest to fulfil a destiny foretold by the legends of long ago.

Join Jack on his journey as he writes the story with the assistance of the magician Merlin and Punctua, the Fairy Godmother of Writing, to punctuate properly and become a bestselling author.

Descriptosaurus Punctuation in Action Years 4–6: Jack and the Crystal Fang is part of a short series of age-specific, beautifully illustrated stories that can be read for pleasure and/or used as a contextualised resource, containing a step-by-step guide to teaching punctuation. The characters from each story are used to demonstrate a range of punctuation rules in a fun and engaging way appropriate to the book’s age group. Areas covered include:

• formulating punctuation rules.
• the use of misconceptions to highlight common errors.
• teaching tips to provide a punctuation model.

The book explores the impact of punctuation on reading, understanding, meaning and effect, and can be used as a basis for pupils’ own punctuation or included in their ‘Writer’s Toolkit.’ These new Descriptosaurus stories are an indispensable teaching aid for making punctuation fun for all primary teachers and literacy coordinators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032040950
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alison Wilcox is the author of the Descriptosaurus series and has worked as a primary school teacher for many years. Whilst teaching, she developed Descriptosaurus to scaffold and improve children’s creative writing, with dramatic results, and she made the decision to give up full-time teaching to work on the Descriptosaurus series. To keep up to date with current practices in schools, Alison undertakes brief teaching assignments, works with schools to develop new resources and conducts workshops for schools and teaching alliances.

Table of Contents

Dedication and acknowledgement ix

Introduction xi

Part A The story of Jack and the Crystal Fang 1

1 The legend 3

2 Dragon Ridge Mountain 7

3 The storm 11

4 Merlin 15

5 The portal 23

6 The cave 29

7 The dragon 35

8 The escape 43

9 The Great Story-Writing Rebellion 49

Jack 49

Punctua 49

Jack 51

The book 55

Final note 56

Part B Learning punctuation with the characters 57

10 Meet the characters 59

Section 1 Jack 60

Section 2 Merlin 61

Section 3 Punctua (the Fairy Godmother of Writing) 62

11 Editing a story 63

Section 1 Writing tips 64

Section 2 Editing a story 66

Section 3 Tackling the sentences 68

12 Capital letters 71

Section 1 Beginning of every sentence and names of people 72

Section 2 Names of places 74

Section 3 Starting a sentence, 'I,' names of people, places, days of the week, months of the year, and titles of books, films, songs and television programmes 76

Section 4 Editing checklist 78

13 Question marks 79

Section 1 Direct and indirect questions 80

14 Exclamation marks 83

15 Inverted commas 87

Section 1 When and how to use inverted commas 88

Section 2 How to punctuate inside the inverted commas 90

16 Apostrophes 93

Section 1 To show possession (discovering what belongs to whom) 94

Section 2 To show possession (discovering if it's one or more) 95

Section 3 To show when two words have been joined together and some letters are missing 97

Section 4 Editing checklist 99

17 Commas: The comma maze 101

Section 1 In a list 102

Section 2 To avoid misunderstandings 104

Section 3 To separate parts of a sentence 106

Section 4 Comma splicing 109

Punctuation quests - level 1 111

Warning 112

Merlin's challenge-level 1 113

Level 1: Punctuation challenge 116

Part C Learning punctuation with the characters, level 2 117

18 Brackets 119

Section 1 Adding extra information 120

Section 2 Adding explanations 121

Section 3 Making comments 123

Section 4 Adding detail and examples 124

19 Dashes 125

20 Semicolons 129

21 Colons 133

22 Ellipsis 137

23 Hyphens 141

24 Bullet points 145

Punctuation quests - level 2 149

Warning 150

Merlin's challenge - level 2 151

Appendix 153

Punctua's challenge 154

Prologue by Merlin 154

Job advert: model 155

Quest mission statement: model 156

Missing person report: model 157

Job advert: template 158

Quest mission statement: template 159

Missing person report: template 161

Punctua's writing challenge 162

Certificate: Apprentice Editor level 1 164

Certificate: Master Editor level 2 165