4.11.D.ix
The Standard
capitalization of historical periods, events, and documents; titles of books; stories and essays; and languages, races, and nationalities
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language Arts and Reading · The student uses the writing process recursively to compose multiple texts that are legible and uses appropriate conventions.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students find and fix capitalization errors while revising their own drafts. They capitalize names such as the Middle Ages, Texas Revolution, U.S. Constitution, Charlotte's Web, Spanish, Black, and Mexican American.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can edit a paragraph independently and correct these names without capitalizing ordinary words nearby. In titles, the student capitalizes the first and last words and the main words, while usually leaving short articles and prepositions lowercase.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often capitalize every word in a title, or they leave its first word lowercase. They may write "spanish" or "mexican," and confuse a general phrase like "a civil war" with the named event "the Civil War."
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Correct only the capitalization errors in: "during our american revolution unit, a mexican american student read the declaration of independence and the book the story of america in spanish."
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs such as "a revolution" and "the American Revolution"; students sort them, then add needed capitals with colored markers.
Ask why "the Civil War" is capitalized but "a civil war" is not, then have students explain in two sentences.
Run a capitalization relay where teams correct sentence strips containing historical names, document names, titles, languages, races, and nationalities.
Have students examine book covers and a history textbook page, then record five correctly capitalized names and explain each capital.
Keep exploring
Related Standards
- 6.10.D.vii
capitalization of proper nouns, including abbreviations, initials, acronyms, and organizations;
- 5.11.D.ix
capitalization of abbreviations, initials, acronyms, and organizations;
- 3.11.D.ix
capitalization of official titles of people, holidays, and geographical names and places;
- 2.11.D.ix
capitalization of months, days of the week, and the salutation and conclusion of a letter;
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