Apostrophes Educational Resources

An apostrophe is an important punctuation mark that is often misused. To make sure your students develop good habits, make sure that they understand apostrophes are only used to denote possession or form contractions. A common apostrophe mistake is to make a word plural. The worksheets and games below will set your students up for success by showing them how to use apostrophes properly.

Apostrophes are important punctuation marks most commonly used to indicate possession or form contractions.

There are many different ways to use apostrophes to show possession, but the two most common are:

• Singular nouns: add ’s to the end of a singular noun, e.g. cat → cat’s
• Plural nouns: There are exceptions to this rule, but in general simply add an apostrophe to the s at the end, e.g. dogs → dogs’

Another common use of apostrophes is in contractions, which are made by removing letters or syllables from words. Your students use contractions every day when speaking. Show them how to use apostrophes by pointing out common uses, such as:

• Do not → don’t
• I am → I’m
• She is → She’s

Apostrophes are an oft-misused punctuation mark. The number one mistake people make is confusing them as necessary for pluralizing a word. While you can use an apostrophe to indicate multiple letters (e.g. “Mind your p’s and q’s.”), you do not need to use an apostrophe to make a word plural.

If you need to add an ‘s’ or ‘es’ to a word to make it plural, you don’t need to do the following:

• Game’s
• Toy’s
• Dog’s

To be clear, apostrophes indicate possession, form contractions, or pluralize individual letters. By the time your students work through the apostrophe worksheets above, they should have a solid understanding of when and how to use them.