Through the past few weeks, we have been learning about contractions. I began by asking the students if there was a shorter way to say, “did not” as in “I did not eat the last cookie!” Several students recognized that we can say “didn’t” instead. I wrote both on the board and we compared the spelling of each. I told the students that “didn’t” is an example of a contraction. We defined a contraction as “smushing two words together into one word.” Then, we discussed how an apostrophe is used to take the place of a letter or group of letters that gets left out when we form the contraction. Many students noticed that the apostrophe takes the place of the letter “o” in “not” when a contraction contains the word “not.”
We watched this video to really get the rule stuck in our heads!
Next, we practiced identifying which two words match each contraction through some cut and paste activities. We learned that there are lots of contractions that don’t have “-n’t!” We listed some of the contractions we discovered, including “let’s,” “I’d,” and “you’re.” (This gave us a good opportunity to reinforce the difference between “your” and “you’re” and “their,” there”, and “they’re.”) We also discovered that some contractions go through big transformations, as in “will+not” becoming “won’t.”
Finally, this week, we completed my favorite contraction activity: Contraction Flippies! In this project, students first identify two words that can be used to form a contraction. They write these words on one side of a sentence strip, being sure to leave a clear space between the words. Then, the students identify which letter or letters are replaced by an apostrophe and fold one end of the sentence strip over to cover those letters. Finally, they complete the contraction by adding the apostrophe and any remaining letters.
Contraction flippies are best understood through examples!
Our classroom walls are now covered in these fun flippies! Stop by to see them for yourself.