Commas in KS2

This blog will cover:

What children need to know about commas in Key Stage 2
What does it all mean?
How do we teach it in a fun and play-based way?

If you’d rather watch me explaining this than reading about it, then skip to the Youtube video here!

Commas in Key Stage Two:

There’s roughly about five different uses of commas that children from Key Stage two onwards will start learning about:

separating items in a list (probably the easiest one)
to indicate parenthesis within a sentence
to separate direct speech from a reporting clause
to avoid ambiguity
to separate a main clause and a subordinate clause

Commas to separate items in a list:

This for example is when you might ask for a list if items you need from a supermarket – Could you get me some milk, bread, eggs and flour please.

You can have items in a list where you use two or more adjectives to describe something, for example, The cat had long, sharp claws.

A quick game that you could play to try and reinforce this uses post-it notes:

Pre-prepare post-it notes with some objects or items written on them and stick them all around the room.
Children grab three of those from around the room.
For an extra challenge, on the back of those post-it notes, you also write a price for that item as well.
Once they’ve got their three post-it notes, children will then write those items in a list within a sentence, e.g Could you get me some … and then the three post-it notes items.
For a maths challenge, turn those post-it notes over and have a look at the price of each item and total all of those up. The person who has spent the least amount wins the game.

Commas to indicate parenthesis within a sentence:

Parenthesis is just some extra added bit of information that if we took it out of a sentence the sentence would still make sense. Essentially, it gives us a little bit more detail. An example of this would be, ‘London, the capital of England, is famous for Buckingham Palace‘

A quick game that you could play to try and reinforce this is called ‘Sentence Roll’:

You need two dice with different pictures on.
The children roll both dice and come up with a sentence that includes some extra information about the object on the first dice.
For example, if I roll a picture of a cat and then a chocolate cake my sentence could be, ‘The cat, who didn’t need any more food, pounced onto the chocolate cake.’
So you’re including the two items from your dice and a little bit of information that you’re going to put your commas around because that’s your parenthesis.

Commas to separate direct speech from a reporting clause:

We use a comma when we separate direct speech from a reporting clause (what is said from who said it). For example, “We need to leave in 10 minutes,” said Dad.

This is quite a tricky one and one of the best ways that I find to teach direct speech and how to write it correctly with the correct punctuation is using the ‘Speech Mark Sandwich’. You can find this resource on my website and it’s a great for not only learning about sentence punctuation but also to think about where a comma within a sentence to separate the direct speech from the reporting clause.

Commas to avoid ambiguity:

Ambiguity is basically confusion in writing, so if you’ve got the sentence, ‘Let’s eat Sam’, if you don’t put any commas in it then it sounds like poor Sam’s going to get eaten! If we put a comma after ‘Let’s eat, Sam’, it means we’re saying to Sam let’s go and eat some dinner or some lunch.

A fun activity to support learning about avoiding ambiguity is is to search for examples of road signs. There are loads of really funny ones online where either incorrect or no punctuation has been used. Once children have explored some of these and thought about where the missing punctuation should be, can they then create their own road signs one with the use of a correct comma and then one without the comma? They could draw pictures to represent what those two two road signs could mean. Could make a nice display in your classroom!

Commas to separate a main clause and a subordinate clause:

A subordinate clause doesn’t make sense on its own whereas a main clause does. For instance, in the example, ‘When Sarah went to bed, she read to make herself sleepy.’ ‘When Sarah went to bed’ in this sentence is a subordinate clause and ‘She read to make herself sleepy’ is the main clause.

We could play a game called Silly Sentences:

Write some main clauses and subordinate clauses on different pieces of paper and put them in two piles face down.
Players then pick a main and a subordinate clause and read it aloud (it’ll probably be a silly sentence).
Finally, have a go at writing that sentence and put the comma in the correct place.

So that’s those five different ways to use commas, with what they are, some examples of each and a game that you could play to help support those children in your class or at home. You might also like to take a look at this revision game called ‘Comma Roll’.