Capital letters practice

What the tool does

Each passage is two or three sentences with every capital letter removed, like "my friend ana lives in texas." The readout says how many capitals the passage needs. Tap a word to give it a capital (tap again to undo). Check counts how many the child found, crosses out any word that was capitalized by mistake, and suggests the kinds of words to look for. Show answers and reasons fills in any missed capitals and lists every one with its reason: starts a sentence, the word I, a person's name, a place, a day or month, a holiday, a language, or a pet's name.

The seven passages include some useful puzzles: Mom used as a name, Statue of Liberty with a lowercase of, and New York City, where all three words are part of the name.

Why fixing a passage helps

Children usually know the rule "names start with a capital" long before they apply it in their own writing. Proofreading someone else's passage is a step between the two: they have to read every word and ask whether it needs a capital, which is exactly what they should do when they check their own work.

Common mix-ups

• Writing a lowercase i on its own. The word I is always a capital letter, wherever it is in the sentence.
• Capitalizing words that seem important, like beach or zoo. Only the names of particular people, places and things get capitals.
• Forgetting days, months and holidays, such as Saturday, July and Thanksgiving. Seasons, like summer, stay lowercase.
• Capitalizing mom or dad every time. They get a capital when used as a name ("Then Mom and I played") but not after my ("my mom").
• Capitalizing every word in a long name. Small words like of usually stay lowercase: Gulf of Mexico.

A 10-minute routine

• Read the passage aloud together. The child taps every sentence start.
• Read it again, looking only for names of people, places and pets.
• Look a third time for days, months, holidays and the word I, then press Check.
• Fix anything Check points out before pressing Show answers and reasons.
• Finish by writing one sentence about your weekend with at least three capitals.

Where it fits by grade

• Kindergarten: capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I (L.K.2.a). In England, Year 1 children learn capital letters for names and for the personal pronoun I.
• Grade 1: capitalize dates and names of people (L.1.2.a).
• Grade 2: capitalize holidays, product names and geographic names (L.2.2.a). Year 2 in England uses capital letters for proper nouns.
• Grade 3: use the harder passages, with rivers, landmarks and languages, as proofreading practice.

Learning more

Proper nouns are covered on Eurekami's free nouns page, with practice and a printable worksheet with an answer key. Lessons explain each capitalization rule step by step, and Daily Practice brings back the rules a child is still forgetting.