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Looking for 3rd grade possessive nouns ideas?
Do your students ever seem to get apostrophe anxiety when it comes to working with singular and plural possessive nouns?
Just like any area of grammar, all it takes is some repetitive practice and engaging activities for your students to become professionals at placing their apostrophes! 😉
This post will give you a basic explanation of how to form singular, plural, and irregular possessive nouns, as well as several resources and activity ideas to add to your unit!
The biggest question teachers have to answer from their students – “When and where do I need to put the apostrophe?!”
When it comes to making regular singular nouns possessive, all you need to do is add -’s.
boy → boy’s Kate → Kate’s giraffe → giraffe’s shirt → shirt’s
Forming singular possessive nouns will definitely be the simplest concept for your students to accept!
Before you move on to plural possessives, I highly recommend making sure your students have a solid understanding of plural nouns.
Plural nouns can be tricky when it comes to determining where to add apostrophes due to some ending in s and others not!
If you’re needing some guidance during your plural nouns unit, you can check out a previous post of mine – 4 Rules to Live By When Teaching Singular and Plural Nouns.
It’ll give you a basic outline of how to make nouns plural, as well as several activities your students can complete!
Before making a plural possessive noun, have your students concentrate on making the correct plural noun form – including irregular nouns!
child → children
bus → buses
girl → girls
goose → geese
Being able to isolate this step is important, as apostrophes can lead to lots of confusion!
After the plural form is created, follow your plural possessive rules.
If the plural noun ends in -s, the apostrophe is placed after the s. (-s’)
buses → buses’
girls → girls’
giraffes → giraffes’
shirts → shirts’
If the plural noun ends in anything but -s, an irregular verb, add an apostrophe and then -s. (-’s)
children → children’s
geese → geese’s
people → people’s
women → women’s
I have several activities to get your students practicing these skills! 🙂
This interactive notebook goes into even more depth of what we’ve talked about between singular, plural, and irregular possessive nouns.
It targets overall definitions of nouns and what possessive means, specific rules for forming singular and plural nouns into possessives, and lots of practice identifying what type of noun is given – singular possessive, plural possessive, or irregular possessive.
What I also love about this notebook is how much practice your students will get with rewriting sentences and being able to verbally say and physically see what possessive really means.
For example, your students will have several opportunities to rewrite statements into possessive nouns → The folder belonging to Rachel is Rachel’s folder.
The feet of the dogs are the dogs’ feet.
This activity would be a great partner or small group center to have students verbally say aloud the statement, and then have another partner create the possessive!
You can find a more detailed preview of the notebook here!
This 3rd-grade possessive noun Google Classroom resource addresses similar skills as the interactive notebook, but comes with teacher editable versions for writing singular, plural, and possessive nouns.
It’s loaded with drag-and-drop and sorting activities for definitions and possessive noun examples.
It also addresses the rules among the different types of possessive nouns and how to correctly form them, so your students can continually review and get more exposure to the rules!
You can find this resource here.
Not sure what a digital mystery picture is?
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Hello, possessive nouns digital mystery pixel!
There are 5 different digital mystery pixels included!
Your students will love this turtle, owl, anteater, gorilla, and bear digital mystery pixel.
Each pixel focuses on a specific skill such as identifying possessive nouns as singular, plural, or irregular, and changing given phrases into all 3 different forms of possession.
These make perfect homework assignments, exit tickets, or even formative and summative assessments!
They’re so versatile and effective in-person or while virtually learning.
You can find a quick preview video of the pixels here!
When it comes to getting possessive nouns to stick, exposure and repetitive practice are going to go a long way!
I highly suggest creating an anchor chart for the different singular, plural, and irregular possessive verb rules.
It doesn’t have to be pretty! 😉
As long as your students can interpret it!
One way you can do this is by sticking a small visual aid to the desk or table area for each student to use throughout the unit.
Here’s a basic chart you can have your students utilize at their desks:
| How to Create Possessive Nouns | ends in -s | ends in anything but -s |
| Singular Nouns | add -’s | add -’s |
| Plural Nouns | just add ‘ | add -’s |
A simple way to get your students up and moving while working on possessive nouns is to set up a Scoot activity around the room or outdoors!
Create task cards with sentence statements and number them.
Include statements like – the eggs of the geese, the shoes of the men, the responsibilities of the boys, the coffee belonging to Zach.
From there, have your students create the possessive noun form on their scoot recording sheet.
It’s such a simple activity to make from scratch – Just create a table in Google Docs and number each box so that the task cards align with the recording sheet. 🙂
If you’re looking for more digital resources, I love the mini-lessons that Khan Academy provides, too.
The dialogue in the videos is very student-friendly and they always provide visual explanations along with their verbal.
If you head to khanacademy.org, all you need to do is search for possessive nouns and you’ll find tons of videos and articles on the topic. 🙂
It’s completely free, too!
I hope you have a great 3rd-grade possessive noun unit!
If you’re looking for more interactive activities for your grammar lessons, feel free to check out the rest of my blog! 🙂
Hey there, I’m Kelly! I I love helping teachers save time with technology and resources so they have more hours in the day to spend with family and friends. Take a look around to find new ideas that you can implement in your classroom today!
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