Our Plan of Attack
Many of the resources I found had the contractions sort of jumbled together with no rhyme or reason. I like to teach in groups or patterns or rules where there is something common with all the words rather than just throwing a bunch of contractions (or spelling words) together. So, using the great categorized list of contractions I found at Enchanted Learning, I am breaking our contraction lessons up as follows:1. Contractions Negating with a verb (e.g. isn't, aren't, wasn't...)
2. Contractions with the verb "to be" (e.g. I'm, you're he's she's))
3. Contractions with Will
4. Contractions with Would
5. Contractions with Have/Has
6. Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda contractions (would've, should've, could've...)
See the end of this post for our embedded Quizlet flashcards/activities
Reading practice - my daughter needs practice with reading the contractions so I am making sure to include activities to do this such as making a gameboard with contractions on the spaces to read, or playing tic tac toe with the contractions written in the tic tac toe spaces, or playing Bang!
-Given a contraction, show what two words it was made from
-Given two words, and in the same row a row of words that look similar, pick out the contraction spelled correctly
-Write sentences with contractions
(For verbs with the word "not") Given sentences, replace the verb with its negative form of a contraction(e.g. He "did come" to the party, replace with "He didn't come to the party."
-Find contractions in books and tell which words make them up
-and of course, games!
Observations/tips for from our studies:
When introducing the contractions, make sure you discuss exactly how a contraction was made (1 or 2 letters were omitted, which letters) and review this often in course of your practice to help reinforce how to form the contraction. I found that this helped my daughter (the repetition).
Make sure to give adequate student practice reading the contractions. I found that my daughter struggled more than I thought she would have.
For each of our study sessions, I try to include the following:
- Read the contractions
- Make contractions/un make the contractions
- Write sentences with contractions or change sentences with contractions into ones without them (or vice versa)
(My girls love this video!)
Learning Resources for Practice
Contractions List and Lesson (list arranged by categories)Contractions List -nice list from Enchanted Learning sorted according to how it is formed. Also has contractions worksheets. (I highlighted the html list and printed the selection and it came out in a nice format for reference).
How to Teach Contractions - includes tips for teaching and a lesson on teaching contractions, an alphabetical contraction list and contractions foldable strips.
Contraction Activities - This Reading Mama
Contractions at Spelling City - premade word lists and activities for contractions
Contractions Tic Tac Toe - will, would, has/has, had (TJ Homeschooling)
Games
Contractions Matching Game - SoftSchoolsTreasure Trove - matching game at PrimaryGames
Contraction Games at Vocabulary.co.il
Our Quizlet Lists
I love quizlet. It's more than just online flashcards. There are several types of practices activities to help you learn. In the bottom right corner of each embed below, you can change the mode to study or play gamelike activities.1. Negative Contractions
Related: Contractions in Negative Forms (worksheet from K12 Reader)