Exclamations Worksheet

An exclamation is the sentence a child already knows how to say long before anyone teaches them to punctuate it — the shout at the end of a race, the gasp at a wave, the cheer when the team wins. This Exclamations Worksheet takes that everyday voice and attaches it to a mark on the page, so second graders learn that the exclamation point is not decoration but information: it tells the reader to say this one out loud, with feeling. Telling sentences get a period. Sentences that carry a strong feeling get an exclamation point. Once a student hears the difference, choosing the mark stops being a guess.

This 2nd grade sentences worksheet works in two directions. Part A gives six sentences with the end mark missing — three plain telling sentences and three that open with an exclamatory frame like What a, Wow, or Hooray — and students write a period or an exclamation mark in the box beside each one. Part B flips the task: three tag words are printed on labels, and students write an exclamation of their own that begins with each tag and ends with an exclamation mark. Read Part A out loud as a class first, with everyone using their reading voice, then let students work Part B on their own. It fits morning work, a grammar center, or a quick check before an editing lesson.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• 6 choose-the-end-mark sentences and 3 write-your-own exclamation prompts

Three things make this Exclamations Worksheet worth the ten minutes it takes. First, every Part A item has exactly one defensible answer, so a student who reads carefully is right and a student who guesses is not — there is no pattern in the marks to key off. Second, the sheet pairs recognizing with producing: spotting an exclamation is easy, writing one that actually carries feeling is the harder half, and Part B asks for it. Third, the tag words give a scaffold that removes the blank-page problem while leaving the sentence itself entirely up to the student.

Teachers and parents can keep the idea going all week. Have students hunt for exclamation points in a favorite picture book and read those lines aloud the way the author meant them. Write one flat sentence on the board and ask the class to rewrite it three ways with different feelings. Play a quick sorting game where one student reads a sentence and the rest hold up a card for period or exclamation point. Point out that a page full of exclamation points loses its power — strong marks work because they are rare.

Related Resources

• Types of Sentences Worksheet
• Adding End Punctuation Worksheet
• Identifying Types of Sentences Worksheet
• Verb Rap Song