CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.2a

ELA2nd GradeConventions of Standard English

The Standard

Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students recognize when a word names a specific holiday, product, or place. They use capital letters for those names when writing and editing sentences.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students correctly write names such as Thanksgiving, Crayola, and Lake Erie. They can edit a sentence for missing capitals and explain why each name needs one.
Common Misconceptions: Students may capitalize common words such as holiday, lake, or crayons. They may also capitalize only one word in a name such as Lake Erie or confuse a product name with the item itself.
How to Assess It: Give this exit ticket: “Rewrite correctly: On thanksgiving, Mia took crayola markers to lake erie.” Ask students to underline each corrected name.

Lesson moves

Give pairs word cards such as ocean, Pacific Ocean, cereal, Cheerios, holiday, and Thanksgiving to sort and correct with capital letter tiles.
Ask students to write three sentences naming a holiday, a product, and a place, then explain each capital choice to a partner.
Play Capitalization Detective by posting five sentences around the room for teams to find and correct missing or unnecessary capitals.
Have students examine a calendar, map, and food packages, then record six names exactly as they appear.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.2a, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

Learning progression

If students are struggling here, check these first.

Mastery here sets students up for these next.

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