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Lesson · Grade 4 · English Language Arts

Commas in a List

  • Grade 4
  • English Language Arts
  • 56 s
  • British Columbia
  • BC4-EN-22

A sentence with no commas, "We bought ice cream cake apples and juice", leaves us unsure if we bought one ice cream cake or ice cream and cake. Commas go in after ice cream and after cake, "and" comes before the last thing, and four numbered pictures show we bought four things, ending on the recap that commas separate three or more things in a list.

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In one sentence

The question this lesson answers

How do commas help us read a list?

Here is a sentence with a list, but no commas.

Transcript

What the lesson says

How do commas help us read a list?

Here is a sentence with a list, but no commas.

How many things did we buy?

Is it one ice cream cake, or ice cream and cake?

Without commas, we can't tell where each thing ends.

Let's write the sentence again and add commas.

Put a comma after ice cream.

Put a comma after cake.

The word and comes before the last thing.

The commas and the word and show where one thing ends and the next one begins.

So it is ice cream and cake, not one ice cream cake.

Now we can see that we bought four things.

Remember, commas separate three or more things in a list.

Curriculum

Where this fits

British Columbia, Grade 4

English Language Arts, Language features, structures, and conventions: conventionsBC4-EN-22

Previous: Subject-Verb Agreement: Make the Verb Match Its SubjectNext: Quotation Marks and Dialogue

The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.

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