Composition Interventions

Capitalization means that a student uses an upper-case letter to designate the first word in a sentence or a proper noun. If you notice that your student is not able to appropriately apply the rules of capitalization, you should intervene to support this area. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your students in this area. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your student's strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.

Explicit Instruction

If you are intervening to support your student's ability to apply the rules of capitalization, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:

• Explain the Skill/Concept. Define capitalization, and explain the activity. ("Today we will be focusing on capitalization. This means that we will read through our papers and make sure the proper words are written with an upper-case, not lower-case, letter. When we use an upper-case letter to start a word, we call it a capitalized word." "We'll be doing some activities that help us correctly apply the rules of capitalization..." )
• Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about identifying words that are appropriately capitalized. ("When I read the sentence, 'My name is Jose,' I see that two words are capitalized: My and Jose. I know that My is the first word of the sentence, which I know should always be capitalized. John is capitalized because it is a proper name. Now, I'll look at the other words: name and is. These words do not need to be capitalized because they are not proper nouns, and are in the middle of the sentence. Now, I've made sure I've applied proper capitalization to this sentence. ")
• Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about identifying words that should be capitalized. ("Now, what if the sentence was written: 'My Name is Jose?' I would notice that a word in the middle of the sentence, Name, was capitalized. I know that this word is not a proper name, so I need to make sure that is uses a lower-case letter. When I have a word capitalized that does not need to be, it confuses the reader, because he might think that it's the name of a person or place.")
• Practice the Skill. Engage in one or more of the activities below to practice capitalization. ("Now, let's practice reading through our papers to make sure we've applied the rules of capitalization appropriately.")

Activity A: Bouncing Ball
If your student struggles with understanding when to apply the rules of capitalization, this strategy will help him start to "listen" for places where words should be capitalized (Culham, 2003).Give the student a bouncy ball, and take a bouncy ball for yourself (or give the bouncy ball to another student in the class). Ask him to read his paragraph. Tell him that you will both bounce the balls each time there is (or should be) a capital letter. If you both bounce your balls at the same time, he can keep reading. If only one of you bounces the ball, resolve the difference (Should there be a capital letter or not?) before moving on.

Teacher: James, here is a bouncy ball. Every time you read a word that should be capitalized, bounce the ball, and I'll do the same. If we both bounce, keep reading. If not, pause your reading, and we'll figure out whether your word needs to be capitalized or not.

James: The (bounce) man sat across from me. He (bounce) looked into my eyes. He (bounce) said, "James (bounce) and Trey (teacher only bounces)..."

Teacher: Stop there. Only I bounced the ball there. I bounced it because I thought Trey should be capitalized. What do you think?

James: Yeah, you are right. I'll change that.

Teacher: Okay, keep reading.

Activity B: Fix the Paragraph
If a student is familiar with the rules of capitalization, but struggles to apply these rules in writing, intervene with Fix the Paragraph (Culham, 2003). Give the student a pre-written paragraph that does not have any words capitalized (or is full of capitalization errors), and ask him to capitalize the appropriate words. If a student needs additional support, provide him with a list of the capitalization rules as a reference.

Note: You can use this same strategy when teaching about punctuation.

Culham, R. (2003). 6 + 1 Traits of writing. New York, NY: Scholastic.