Capital Letter Monsters

If you have spent anytime in a first grade classroom, you know that 6 and 7 year old’s writing often looks like this:

The cAt liKEs to driNk MiLK.

First graders use capital letters in the “wrong place” all the time. This is totally normal and expected during first grade. It is also something that is worked on a great deal throughout the school year. That said, the students I am working with do this all the time and it needs to be addressed repeatedly. But, in my opinion, it gets pretty boring (and is not too effective) to just say over and over “Make that a lower case letter…Make that lower case letter.” So I created the Capital Letter Monster. And this is what I tell my students:

The Capital Letter Monster is super sneaky.  He (or she) sneaks into your writing when you are not paying attention and makes letters that should be lower case into upper case letters!  

They think this is pretty funny and I will often hear one of my students say, “Oh, no! The Capital Letter Monster did it again!” and then they correct their own work.  It is silly, fun and very effective.  We even created our very own Capital Letter Monsters that “live” at our work spots and are a visual reminder to make those upper case letters lower case. Here are some of the monsters created by my first graders:

These guys are already helping. I sat down with one of my students this afternoon to do some editing and just as she was about to sit down, she said, “Wait! I have to get my monster!”

What would your child’s Capital Letter Monster look like?

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