Mentor Text Link Up -- Punctuation Takes a Vacation!

Well, this is month #2 of Collaboration Cuties Mentor Text Link Up!  This week the focus is language arts, so I am sharing a well-known, but a goodie--Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver.

In this wonderfully illustrated (by Lynn Rowe Reed) picture book, day after day of always doing their job, Mr. Wright says, "Let's give punctuation a vacation."  After being a little miffed with the suggestion, punctuation decides to head off on a vacation...

Of course, they are missed terribly, as nothing is the same--nothing makes sense without them!

A couple of days pass, and the kids in Mr. Wright's class received a bundle of postcards from each type of punctuation.  The kids guessed who each postcard was from and they wanted to write back, but this was quite hard to do without punctuation! After borrowing some punctuation from a neighboring classroom where it was "running wild", the kids in Mrs. Wright's class wrote a letter begging punctuation to return... (Since punctuation was running wild in the neighboring room, the letter had many misuses of their friends.)

What a splendid text to teach kids the importance of punctuation and how it tells our readers how to read our writing!  

Here are a few things you can do with the text...

Scan or type out the postcards from each punctuation mark. As you are reading aloud, stop at the point when the postcards arrive and have small groups of students guess who has written each card (just like Mr. Wright's students did in the text).

Scan or type the page that contains the letter written to punctuation in which punctuation is "running wild".  Discuss what changes need to be made and how important it is to know the correct way to use each type of punctuation.  Misuse is just as "bad" as not using any at all... :0)

In the end of the book, the question mark asks, "Who did you miss the most?" Have students justify who they would miss the most if punctuation took a vacation.  Download the writing sheet here!

If you haven't purchased or used this text before, it is a MUST HAVE! Stop over to Collaboration Cuties to link up with more language arts mentor texts...

Have a fabulous week!