South Dakota ELA 3.L.2.b
The Standard
- 3.L.2
- Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Use correct capitalization.
South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students capitalize sentence beginnings, the word I, and names of people, places, and days. They check their writing for missing and extra capitals.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student writes “On Monday, I met Maya at Lincoln School” with the right capitals. They leave words like “school” and “friend” lowercase when those words are not part of a name.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may capitalize words they think are important, such as “Friend” or “Pizza.” Others forget to capitalize “I” in the middle of a sentence or write “monday” with a lowercase letter.
How to Assess It
- Ask students to rewrite: “on monday, i went to rapid city. my friend maya came too.” Have them circle each letter they changed.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs lowercase sentence strips with names and day words; have them rewrite each strip with the capitals it needs.
Ask students to write two sentences explaining why “school” stays lowercase but “Lincoln School” takes capitals.
Play capitalization detective: project four sentences and have teams mark missing and extra capitals, then compare fixes.
Post a lunch menu with “monday” and “tuesday” in lowercase; students fix the day names and leave “pizza” and “carrots” lowercase.
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Printable 3.L.2.b Worksheet
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