1st Edition
Descriptosaurus Punctuation in Action Years 4-6: Jack and the Crystal Fang
The only cure for a deadly plague sweeping the country is the crystal fang of a dragon that has terrorised the surrounding countryside for many years. Until now, the location of its den on Dragon Ridge Mountain has remained a mystery. In a race against time, Jack battles through a storm to reach the top of Dragon Ridge Mountain. With Merlin to guide him, Jack enters the dragon’s den and comes face to face with the monstrous beast. This is a story of courage, magic and one boy’s brave quest to fulfil a destiny foretold by the legends of long ago.
Join Jack on his journey as he writes the story with the assistance of the magician Merlin and Punctua, the Fairy Godmother of Writing, to punctuate properly and become a bestselling author.
Descriptosaurus Punctuation in Action Years 4–6: Jack and the Crystal Fang is part of a short series of age-specific, beautifully illustrated stories that can be read for pleasure and/or used as a contextualised resource, containing a step-by-step guide to teaching punctuation. The characters from each story are used to demonstrate a range of punctuation rules in a fun and engaging way appropriate to the book’s age group. Areas covered include:
- formulating punctuation rules.
- the use of misconceptions to highlight common errors.
- teaching tips to provide a punctuation model.
The book explores the impact of punctuation on reading, understanding, meaning and effect, and can be used as a basis for pupils’ own punctuation or included in their ‘Writer’s Toolkit.’ These new Descriptosaurus stories are an indispensable teaching aid for making punctuation fun for all primary teachers and literacy coordinators.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART A – THE STORY JACK AND THE CRYSTAL FANG
CHAPTER 1 The Legend
CHAPTER 2 Dragon Ridge Mountain
CHAPTER 3 The Storm
CHAPTER 4 Merlin
CHAPTER 5 The Portal
CHAPTER 6 The Cave
CHAPTER 7 The Dragon
CHAPTER 8 The Escape
CHAPTER 9 The Great Story-Writing Rebellion
PART B – LEARNING PUNCTUATION WITH THE CHARACTERS: Level 1
CHAPTER 10 Meet the Characters Section 1: Jack
Section 2: Merlin
Section 3: Punctua (Fairy Godmother of Writing) CHAPTER 11 Editing a Story
QUEST 1: (Ending the Period Drought in the Unit of Sense)
Section 1: Writing and Editing Tips
Section 2: Sentences CHAPTER 12 Capital Letters
QUEST 2: (BaTtLE oF ThE caPiTaLSe)
Section 1: Beginning of a sentence/names of people
Section 2: Names of places
Section 3: Days of the Week & Months of the Year
Section 4: Capital Letters Editing Checklist CHAPTER 13 Question Marks
QUEST 3: (Interrogation in the Centre of Questions)
CHAPTER 14 Exclamation Marks
QUEST 4: (The Quest for Excitement at Shrieking Point)
CHAPTER 15 Inverted Commas (Speech Marks)
QUEST 5: (The Quest for Quotation, the ‘God of Speech’)
Section 1: When and How to Use
Section 2: How to punctuate inside the Speech Marks CHAPTER 16 Apostrophes
QUEST 6: (The Search for the Apostrophes’ Attachments)
Section 1: Possession
Section 2: Plural nouns ending in ‘s’
Section 3: Singular nouns ending in ‘s’
QUEST 7: (The Apostrophe Mystr’ry of the Missing Letters)
Section 4: Contraction/missing letters
Section 5: It’s/its; they’re/ their; you’re/your
Section 6: Editing Checklist CHAPTER 17 Commas
QUEST 8: (The confusing, bemusing, baffling List Comma Mystery)
Section 1: Commas in a list
QUEST 9: (Separated in the Break of Meaning)
Section 2: To make the meaning clear
Section 3: To separate parts of a sentence
QUEST 10: (The, Plague of, the Comma, Splicers)
Section 4: Comma Splicing
Editing Checklist
Punctuation Quests Level 1
Merlin’s Challenge
Level 1: Punctuation Challenge
PART C – LEARNING PUNCTUATION WITH THE CHARACTERS: Level 2
CHAPTER 18 Brackets
QUEST 1: (Quest for Explanations in the Land of Brackets)
CHAPTER 19 Dashes
QUEST 2: (Stress Test in the Dash of Emphasis Challenge)
CHAPTER 20 Semicolons
QUEST 3: (Quest for Connections in the linking Passages of Semicolons)
CHAPTER 21 Colons
QUEST 4: (Quest for the List of Introductions and Explanations in the Colon Tunnels)
CHAPTER 22 Ellipsis
QUEST 5: (Missing in the Land of Ellipsis)
CHAPTER 23 Hyphens
QUEST 6: (Quest for Meaning in the Land of Hyphen Fasteners)
CHAPTER 24 Bullet Points
QUEST 7: (Quest for Key Points at the Bullet Zone)
Punctuation Quests Level 2
APPENDIX:
QUEST 8: Merlin’s Challenge: Check-up for the Plague of the Comma Splicers
Punctua’s Challenge: Experimenting with Punctuation
Bullet Point Models: Job Advert
Bullet Point Models: Quest Mission Statement
Report Model: Missing Person Report
Planning Templates: Job Advert
Planning Templates: Quest Mission Statement
Planning Templates: Missing Person Report
Punctua’s Writing Challenge: An Alternative Ending to a Cliff-hanger
Apprentice Editor Certificate Level 1
Master Editor Certificate Level 2
Biography
Alison Wilcox is the author of the Descriptosaurus series and has worked as a primary school teacher for many years. Whilst teaching, she developed Descriptosaurus to scaffold and improve children’s creative writing, with dramatic results, and she made the decision to give up full-time teaching to work on the Descriptosaurus series. To keep up to date with current practices in schools, Alison undertakes brief teaching assignments, works with schools to develop new resources and conducts workshops for schools and teaching alliances.
