How to Use Quotation Marks

As we move through the grade three writing program, it's important to not only teach students the importance of engaging their reader and organizing their ideas effectively, they also need to know the more technical aspects of what good writers do. Using quotation marks is a bit like making bread: one missed step and you end up with a bit of a gooey mess. 

For this reason, I like to teach children that there are five key steps (or ingredients!) to correct quotation mark usage. 

We read a variety of stories on the Smartboard as part of Morning Message that rely heavily on characters speaking in order for the plot to move along, so the boys and girls are familiar with how they work. Our focus for this month has been on reading orally so that we sound like the characters, so naturally, that meant we needed lots and lots of dialogue in the story.   

Over the course of the last week or so, the boys and girls have learned all about how to show when a character is speaking in their own writing. This was introduced when students started working on the page below from their Pancake Tuesday booklet. Here they're asked to finish the story and they were encouraged to use quotation marks where possible. 

On Thursday night, the boys and girls will need to practice those skills again on their homework page (pictured below). 

The graphic below was used as part of a blog post a few years ago. Students can use this as a reference guide when checking their own work at home tonight to make sure they're work is completed correctly.