First Grade · Writing · week 5

Sentence Detective: Find and Fix

Find and correct common sentence errors: missing capital letters, missing end marks, and incomplete thoughts.

This week you are a sentence detective. You will hunt for three common mistakes: a missing capital letter, a missing end mark, and a sentence that is not a complete thought.

Good detectives check one clue at a time. First check the capital letter. Then check the end mark. Then ask, "Does this make a complete thought?"

📋 For the teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Give your child a red pen (or a special "detective pencil") to mark errors -- a little ceremony makes editing fun.
  • Walk through the three checks in the same order every time: capital, end mark, complete thought.
  • Write a few sentences with errors yourself and let your child catch you -- kids love finding a grown-up mistake.
  • Praise the process of checking, not just a correct fix -- careful checking is the real skill.
Talk about it:
  • What are the three things a sentence detective checks?
  • Which check do you do first?
  • How can you tell if a sentence is missing its doing part?

Mastery looks like: They independently spot and fix a missing capital, missing end mark, or incomplete thought in a sentence.

Common stumbles: Fixing only one error and stopping, without checking for the other two kinds of mistakes.

See it visually

Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.

Sentence BuilderDrag word tiles into a real sentence, with a capital and end mark.try →Punctuation PowerThe same words as a statement, a question, or a shout — hear it change.try →
Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
Records attendance + 15 min of Writing for this learner.
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