Descriptosaurus Punctuation in Action Years 4-6: Jack and the Crystal Fang

Alison Wilcox is the author of the Descriptosaurus series and has worked as a primary school teacher for many years. Whilst teaching, she developed Descriptosaurus to scaffold and improve children’s creative writing, with dramatic results, and she made the decision to give up full-time teaching to work on the Descriptosaurus series. To keep up to date with current practices in schools, Alison undertakes brief teaching assignments, works with schools to develop new resources and conducts workshops for schools and teaching alliances.

• Acknowledgements Introduction PART A – THE STORY JACK AND THE CRYSTAL FANGCHAPTER 1 The Legend CHAPTER 2 Dragon Ridge Mountain CHAPTER 3 The Storm CHAPTER 4 Merlin CHAPTER 5 The Portal CHAPTER 6 The Cave CHAPTER 7 The Dragon CHAPTER 8 The Escape CHAPTER 9 The Great Story-Writing Rebellion PART B – LEARNING PUNCTUATION WITH THE CHARACTERS: Level 1CHAPTER 10 Meet the Characters Section 1: Jack Section 2: Merlin Section 3: Punctua (Fairy Godmother of Writing) CHAPTER 11 Editing a Story QUEST 1: (Ending the Period Drought in the Unit of Sense) Section 1: Writing and Editing Tips Section 2: Sentences CHAPTER 12 Capital Letters QUEST 2: (BaTtLE oF ThE caPiTaLSe) Section 1: Beginning of a sentence/names of people Section 2: Names of places Section 3: Days of the Week & Months of the Year Section 4: Capital Letters Editing Checklist CHAPTER 13 Question Marks QUEST 3: (Interrogation in the Centre of Questions) CHAPTER 14 Exclamation Marks QUEST 4: (The Quest for Excitement at Shrieking Point) CHAPTER 15 Inverted Commas (Speech Marks) QUEST 5: (The Quest for Quotation, the ‘God of Speech’) Section 1: When and How to Use Section 2: How to punctuate inside the Speech Marks CHAPTER 16 Apostrophes QUEST 6: (The Search for the Apostrophes’ Attachments) Section 1: Possession Section 2: Plural nouns ending in ‘s’ Section 3: Singular nouns ending in ‘s’ QUEST 7: (The Apostrophe Mystr’ry of the Missing Letters) Section 4: Contraction/missing letters Section 5: It’s/its; they’re/ their; you’re/your Section 6: Editing Checklist CHAPTER 17 Commas QUEST 8: (The confusing, bemusing, baffling List Comma Mystery) Section 1: Commas in a list QUEST 9: (Separated in the Break of Meaning) Section 2: To make the meaning clear Section 3: To separate parts of a sentence QUEST 10: (The, Plague of, the Comma, Splicers) Section 4: Comma Splicing Editing Checklist Punctuation Quests Level 1 Merlin’s Challenge Level 1: Punctuation Challenge PART C – LEARNING PUNCTUATION WITH THE CHARACTERS: Level 2CHAPTER 18 Brackets QUEST 1: (Quest for Explanations in the Land of Brackets) CHAPTER 19 Dashes QUEST 2: (Stress Test in the Dash of Emphasis Challenge) CHAPTER 20 Semicolons QUEST 3: (Quest for Connections in the linking Passages of Semicolons) CHAPTER 21 Colons QUEST 4: (Quest for the List of Introductions and Explanations in the Colon Tunnels) CHAPTER 22 Ellipsis QUEST 5: (Missing in the Land of Ellipsis) CHAPTER 23 Hyphens QUEST 6: (Quest for Meaning in the Land of Hyphen Fasteners) CHAPTER 24 Bullet Points QUEST 7: (Quest for Key Points at the Bullet Zone) Punctuation Quests Level 2 APPENDIX:QUEST 8: Merlin’s Challenge: Check-up for the Plague of the Comma Splicers Punctua’s Challenge: Experimenting with Punctuation Bullet Point Models: Job AdvertBullet Point Models: Quest Mission StatementReport Model: Missing Person Report Planning Templates: Job AdvertPlanning Templates: Quest Mission StatementPlanning Templates: Missing Person ReportPunctua’s Writing Challenge: An Alternative Ending to a Cliff-hangerApprentice Editor Certificate Level 1Master Editor Certificate Level 2