Capitalization and the CLA

Class time on Thursday was devoted largely to capitalization. Everyone in the class needed a lesson about proper nouns. I have noticed from certain trainees' writing habits that they require some aid recognizing when to use punctuation and capitalization. As a class we covered punctuation about 2 weeks ago, the week before that was about how to combine sentences, and this week has been when to use capitalization. My focus on writing comes from my concern for the trainees to fill out job applications with as little aid as possible, and to help them communicate through writing in the workplace setting.

Thanks to the internet I found a fantastic Jeopardy Game which thoroughly reviews capitalization. I started out covering capitalization by passing out a review packet which teaches about how capitalization is used at the beginning of a sentence, for names, for titles, for initials, for holidays, etc. I divided the class into two groups, one group works very well independently and they were allowed to ask Arc's staff person as needed, the second group I read the examples and questions with and we discussed possible answers and why they were right. My first group worked very quickly and in order to provide an extension I modified a worksheet about punctuation and capitalization which required the trainees to correct the errors in the sentence. The second part of my worksheet required the trainees to write their own incorrect sentences and then trade with another group member and see if they could find the errors. The trainees LOVED doing this part of the worksheet and one trainee in particular who normally hates writing ended up writing 7 sentences.

Thursday finished out the first week of the CLA portion of the class. On my end, I find it much easier to plan and focus my lessons on key skills with these shorter days. The CLA teacher has expressed great optimism for how the class is going and from what I have observed I have to agree. The trainees have responded very well to the material. Only one trainee has expressed some disinterest in the content, but based on this person's past I would credit their resistance more to the fact that their motivation to stay in the CLA or HSE class is based around their significant other's continuation with the program. 

Next week I will introduce spelling and vocabulary. I've already created the spelling lists and planned the exercises, now I'm just waiting on getting started!