Where the apostrophe goes: contractions practice for grades 1 to 3

A second grader in my daughter's class wrote "did'nt" on every line of a story and was honestly annoyed when the teacher marked it. She knew what the word meant and how to say it. Nobody had shown her that the apostrophe sits exactly where the missing letter used to be.

What the sheet looks like

The contractions worksheet has three formats. Match prints contractions in one column and their expanded forms in the other, and the child draws lines between them. Write the contraction gives "do not" and a blank. Write the expanded form gives "isn't" and asks for "is not." The Easy list is the twenty most common forms, don't, isn't, I'm, you're, that's; the Standard list adds I'll, could've, let's and the rest. You pick 10, 15 or 20 problems and an optional answer key.

Why it works

• Seeing "do not" beside "don't" makes the rule visible: the o leaves, the apostrophe takes its seat. Kids who have seen that twenty times stop writing did'nt.
• The match format asks nothing of handwriting or spelling, so a first grader who reads well but writes slowly can still do a full page.
• The Standard list includes could've and should've. A child who writes "could of" at eight will still be writing it at fourteen unless somebody shows them the real expansion.

Who it suits

At six, use Match with the Easy list and ten problems. By eight or nine, switch to Write the expanded form on the Standard list, because that is the direction that exposes "could of" and "should of." This is not a sheet for a child still sounding out words; the whole exercise assumes they read don't without thinking. The step before this is compound words, where two words join and nothing is lost, so the idea of "two words becoming one" is already familiar when the apostrophe arrives.

One sheet a week for a month covers the whole list. After that it is just proofreading.