Category: Our Learning Stories

We are learning to understand and use apostrophes for contractions.

I can use apostrophe when writing contracted words.

Primary Four have been busy this week looking at apostrophes for contractions. We had different stations set up to practise this and all found it really engaging and fun. Firstly, we were asked for help by Shrek! He had written a letter to Puss in Boots and Donkey and wondered if we would read it for him to check for any mistakes. We were all up to the task!

So Station 1 was working in pairs to check Shrek’s letter. We spotted apostrophes used incorrectly for contractions and lots of other silly mistakes too like capital letters and spellings!

Station 2 was where we had to work as a group to complete a contractions loop cards game. We had lots of cards with which we shared evenly and had to match with its other half. The aim is to create one large circle together (a bit like dominoes). All our groups managed to complete it and noticed that a couple of the cards were in there to trick them!

Our final Station was number 3 and this was contraction surgery! We had lots of expanded phrases like ‘cannot’ and ‘you have’ and we had to cut them up correctly and insert a plaster apostrophe in the correct place. This was very messy but we were all able to justify why we had placed our plaster apostrophe in the place we did and why it was correct.

We now have a much more solid understanding of the use of contractions and were able to come back together as a class and share our learning. We have fixed Shrek’s letter now so hopefully he will get a response back from Donkey and Puss soon!

Learning Intention:
We are learning to write a letter
Success Criteria:
I can have a reason for writing as an introduction
I can write in first person
I can include a date
I can open and close with an appropriate greeting

For our topic of ‘Local Community’ we visited the nearby construction site, building new houses. The pupils prepared questions for the Builders, West Lothian Council and for our Head Teacher on what they were curious about the changing area.
In our writing lesson, the pupils drafted letters to be sent to the Builders and the Council containing these questions so that they might get some answers.
I am happy to say that the whole class managed to accomplish all the success criteria and made some very professional looking letters.

“I learned you need a comma after ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ otherwise it won’t be laid out properly” -Andrew

“I learned you need to write directly below the comma of our opening” -Katie

“I learned you need to end with ‘Yours Faithfully’ to close it properly” -Oliwia