I’m a fan of printables that isolate a specific element and clearly reinforce a concept. Many Montessori-style printables are designed to do that for preschool through early elementary. Every Star Is Different has new writing mechanics sentence challenges that do that for elementary through middle-school students!
Disclosure: I’ve been given a copy of these materials to review. My opinions are honest and my own. This post contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).
I’ve loved all the materials I’ve used from Every Star Is Different.
Here are the Writing Mechanics Printables Available from Every Star Is Different:
Every Star Is Different’s Writing Mechanics Sentence Challenge Bundle is specifically designed for elementary and middle school students working on punctuation and writing skills.
The bundle includes seven different printables packs that follow the sequence of the Montessori Language Album.
- Capitalization
- Periods, Question Marks, and Exclamation Points
- Apostrophes
- Commas
- Quotation Marks
- Hyphens
- Colons and Semicolons
The bundle includes 350 pages (50 sentence challenges for each topic listed above). The printable packs are color coded by focus and progress in difficulty as you move through each one.
Renae and Jason spent hours researching the latest rules and verifying information in multiple resources. All sentence challenges come with a control, so children can check their own work.
Here’s a bit about how I’ll be using the printables to introduce the U.S. government to my grandkids.
My 4-year-old grandson is homeschooled, so he’ll probably get the most use from the sentence challenges. I afterschool my 8- and 4-year old granddaughters, Zoey and Sophia. With Zoey, I’ll have her do one or two sentence challenges a day for review where needed. If she’s confused about a rule, that would be the topic I’d focus on. I love that they make it easy to review writing mechanics rules without being overwhelming.
Punctuation Books with Writing Mechanics Sentence Challenge Cards
For homeschooling or whenever I want to focus on a particular topic, I love to use books when I introduce a topic. These are some fun punctuation books: The Day Punctuation Came to Town, If You Were a Comma (part of a word fun series), The Punctuation Station, and Punctuation Celebration.
I like to use a plate stand for the sentence strips. For example, if I’m featuring the comma, I have the unedited sentence strips in the first section, the blank strips in the second section, the control strips in the third section, and a related book in the fourth section. You might prefer to use a different method, but this works well for me.
Capitalization Sentence Challenges
- Capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence.
- Capitalize proper nouns, such as places, names of people, nationalities, religions, languages, days, months, events, brand names, planets, etc.
- Capitalize titles that replace a person’s first name.
Periods, Question Marks, and Exclamation Points Sentence Challenges
- Use a period at the end of a declaration or sentence.
- Use a question mark at the end of a direct question.
- Use an exclamation point after an interjection.
Apostrophes Sentence Challenges
- Use apostrophes to show that a person owns something or when something belongs to someone.
- Use an apostrophe after the “o” when writing out the time of day, as in six o’clock.
- Use apostrophes in contractions or omissions.
Commas Sentence Challenges
- Use a comma before writing out a direct quote as part of a sentence.
- Use a comma to make a list of two or more items or elements in a sentence, putting a comma after each item listed, until there is only one item left on the list.
- Use a comma to separate a city from a state and a street address from a city and state.
If You Were a Comma Book with Comma Writing Mechanics Sentence Challenge Cards
As I mentioned earlier, I like to use a plate stand for the sentence strips. For the comma, I have the unedited sentence strips in the first section, the blank strips in the second section, the control strips in the third section, and a related book in the fourth section.
Quotation Marks Sentence Challenges
- Use quotation marks when directly quoting another person in a sentence.
- Use quotation marks when writing the titles of smaller works, such as poems, book chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and essays.
- Use quotation marks to highlight a word in a sentence.
Hyphens Sentence Challenges
- Use a hyphen between each word of a multiple word adjective right before a noun in a sentence.
- Use a hyphen when writing out fractions in a sentence.
- Use a hyphen to avoid awkward repetition of vowels when adding a prefix to a word.
Colons and Semicolons Sentence Challenges
- Use a colon when writing out the time of day, to separate hours from minutes and minutes from seconds.
- Use a colon to separate a title from a subtitle in a sentence.
- Use a semicolon to join together two clauses using a conjunctive verb such as however, moreover, indeed, finally, likewise, etc.
My Reviews of Montessori Printables from Every Star Is Different
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