Use these free printables and lessons to help teach your students how to form and use possessive nouns.
This is a collection of resources you can use as you are teaching students about identification and forming of possessive nouns.
Interactive Anchor Charts – We have created three interactive anchor charts for your introduction to possessives. Guide your students in creating possessives to match the pictures on the anchor charts and then display them in your classroom.
Mini-Lessons – Here we have described three simple mini-lesson ideas that you can use in directly teaching students about possessives and forming possessives in their writing.
Lesson #1 – This first lesson involves reading passages (or entire texts) from published student literature. As you read the text aloud with your students guide them to identify possessives in the writing and determine the reasons why they are possessives. As students see possessives used in real writing they will come to understand the importance of using them correctly in their own. (This is also a good idea for a literacy center once it has been modeled for the class. See the interactive notebook pages below.)
Lesson #2 – This lesson will focus on teaching students how to form singular possessives. Begin by having the class brainstorm about ten singular nouns that they might use as a subject that might own or possess something. You might start by giving them a few examples so they understand what you mean, such as “teacher” or “cat”. Record the words so the students can see them. Next take each word individually and discuss objects that each of those subjects might own. For example talk about the kinds of things a teacher or a cat might own or have. Then, for each one guide students into sharing how they might say that, for example, a teacher or cat might own or have something. As the students share phrases such as “the teacher’s book” or “the cat’s whiskers” show them how to form these singular possessives in writing with the apostrophe + s (or if it ends with an s already, then just adding the apostrophe).
Lesson #3 – This lesson will be a repeat of the previous one, but in this case have students brainstorm plural nouns that might be used as the subjects. Follow the same procedure as in lesson #2 in modeling for students how to form plural possessives.
NOTE: A fun or silly twist on both of the previous lessons (which could also be used as a word work center) is to place ten subject nouns into one bag and then ten objects that the subjects might own in another bag. Pull out a subject card from one bag and an object card from the the other to create some very silly possessives with your students! We did this in our classrooms and students were so engaged because they thought some of them were completely hilarious! (Ex: The teacher’s whiskers…)
“Write the Possessive” Cards – Use these cards at a center where students choose a card that contains an object and the owner of the object. Then they write the possessive that matches the card on one of the recording pages (one for just the possessives and one to write complete sentences).
Sentence Sort – Students sometimes get confused with the difference between plurals and possessives because of the “s” and they might even struggle with contractions because of the apostrophe. In this activity students read a sentence and then determine if it contains a plural, a possessive or a contraction. You might choose to only have them focus on two of the three in an initial sort or differentiate by having some students sort all types while others focus on those with which they are having difficulty.
Roll a Possessive Dice Game – This game has students rolling dice to determine a subject and an object. Then they write a phrase or a sentence using those words (two recording pages provided). This resource can be used as it is or it can be edited (so you can have several different versions) using the free version of Adobe Reader. Recording Forms
Interactive Notebook Pages – Here we have provided some different pages you may choose to have your students put into a Language interactive notebook. The first page has students providing samples for how to form each type of possessive. The next two pages ask students to write a possessive phrase under the flap. The final page has students finding possessives in their reading and sorting them into columns to suit the type of possessive (or non-example) that it is. We have also included two blank interactive notebook pages that you can use as needed.
Exit Tickets – Want to do a quick check to see if your students are mastering possessives? Use our exit tickets to see what they can do.