Contractions

Look no further than VocabularySpellingCity to meet all of your needs for teaching contractions. We offer contractions games, printable grammar worksheets, videos, classroom exercises, and more! This page outlines the lists that VocabularySpellingCity has to offer as well as fun ideas for teaching contractions and ways to clarify frequent areas of confusion. We have contractions lists for students from Kindergarten through High School, all customized to assist in teaching the differences among contractions, possessive nouns, and plural nouns.

VocabularySpellingCity has most of the common contractions in the system ready for use: there are over 400 word lists with contractions already entered by teachers and parents. Your students can play a variety of learning games to teach and reinforce the spelling and usage of the contractions. VocabularySpellingCity's games can be played online or printed.TestMe, MatchIt!, Unscramble, WhichWord?, and Audio Word Match are particularly useful games for learning contractions. Any list can be integrated into an interactive game or worksheet. Use our example lists below, do a search to browse other lists, or create your own!

TIP: When adding contractions such as I'll or I've in your lists, please make sure to enter the word correctly capitalized. The system will recognize the words as correctly spelled when they are an exact match to your entered word lists.

A capitonym is a word whose meaning changes based on whether or not it is capitalized.

Ways of Teaching Contractions

Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put together and an apostrophe is added to replace the omitted letters.
Contractions are a frequent topic for spelling and vocabulary practice since they tend to be confusing.

Teachers have many different methods for teaching contractions. One teacher actually demonstrates the creation of contractions by "performing surgery." For the "surgery," the students don surgical masks and gloves to cut out the unused letters and replace them with apostrophes. Other educators write songs or poems to help teach contractions. Still others use spelling games as a fun way to help the students learn contractions.

Frequent Areas of Confusion

Students can confuse contractions with compound words where words are joined together to form new words or with possessives.
Possessives appear similar to contractions because of the apostrophe. Teachers often have spelling lessons to highlight and teach these distinctions.

Areas of Confusion Between Contractions and Possessive Forms
Possessive using an apostrophe	The dog's collar is new. (singular, one dog) The dogs' collars are new.(plural possessive)
Possessive without an apostrophe	Its collar is new. Her necklace is new.
Contraction of two words such as: it and is; is and not; I and would	It's a new collar. The collar isn't new. I'd like a new collar.

Contractions at a glance:

Not Contractions: aren't, can't, couldn't, didn't, doesn't, don't, hasn't, haven't, isn't, shouldn't, wasn't, weren't, won't, wouldn't

Have, Has, and Had Contractions: I've, you've, we've, they've

Am, Is and Are Contractions: I'm, you're, he's, she's, it's, we're, they're, that's, who's

Would and Will Contractions: I'll, you'll, he'll, she'll, it'll, we'll, they'll, that'll, who'll, I'd, you'd, he'd, she'd, it'd, we'd, they'd, that'd

Words Confused with Contractions: its, it's, their, there, they're, who's, whose, your, you're, were, we're, where's

Forms of Nouns: aunt, aunts, aunt's, aunts', boy, boys, boy's, boys', lady, ladies, lady's, ladies', doctor, doctors, doctor's, doctors', uncle, uncles, uncle's, uncles', friend, friends, friend's, friends', bird, birds, bird's, birds', farmer, farmers, farmer's, farmers'