Free speech marks resources

As part of our "Signs and Symbols" unit of inquiry, my class has done lots of work on using punctuation to signify meaning. Last week we worked a lot on the use of speech marks (quotation marks). Here are some lesson ideas and resources that I used.

Visual reminders:
Having taught the rules about how speech marks, other punctuation and capital letters need to be used when the quotation is at the start or end of the sentence, we used these Gruffalo-themed posters (free to download from TES) to check over our work. I edited these slightly to use a different font and to make the important words bold and underlined.

I have also used these Ratatouille-themed posters (also free from TES) for older children in the past.

Tinipiny Camera iPad App:

I'm very lucky that all of the children in my class have an iPad. We had great fun working on speech marks using the free Tinipiny Camera Free (Balloons) app. There is also an Android version of this app. This app allows you to take a photograph and insert a speech bubble or a thought bubble. 

We used this app in a variety of ways. For the first lesson, I gave the children a sheet of sentences with quotations, finishing with "said," and one of the names of the children in the class e.g. "What time is it?" said Chloe. The children then had to find Chloe, take a photograph of her, isolate the speech and put it in a speech bubble.

When the children became more confident with how to write speech marks, I asked them to write a 4 or 6 part dialogue between them and a partner. They then used Tinipiny Camera to take photos of each part. The then put the photos side by side on Keynote to create a cartoon of their own dialogue. 


Creating own cartoons on paper:
This was an easy lesson to prepare. A quick Google search of "blank cartoon" will lead you to lots of comic strips. I created two different sheets for different ability levels. I used cartoons with lots of speech for one level and I used shorter cartoons (or cropped the last box off one I had already chosen) for other children. The class absolutely loved creating their own versions of what the characters were saying. They stuck this into their writing books and wrote the dialogue from the cartoon underneath.

Image source