Possessive Apostrophe -s
Practice marking possession using the possessive morpheme with picture prompts.
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Ask whose rather than asking for the phrase. Pointing at a bone and asking whose is it produces the possessive naturally; asking the student to say the dog's bone produces an imitation. Use real objects in the room where you can — whose pencil is this — because the possessive is about ownership and works best when something is actually owned. Eight minutes covers the twelve.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentPresent the item and wait 5 seconds of quiet before helping.Log as correct
- HintStress the part of the sentence that changes, or point to the word ending.Log as cued
- Sentence starterSay the first half of the sentence and let the student finish it.Log as cued
- ModelSay the correct form in the whole sentence; the student repeats it.Log as cued
Adjust it
Give a sentence starter every time, and do fewer cards.
Ask for a new sentence of the student's own with the same form, with no card to lean on.
Matching IEP goal
Given sentence cards, Student will produce the target grammatical form in sentences in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than an indirect cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Twelve possessive phrases: the dog's bone, the cat's tail, Mom's keys, the teacher's desk, the boy's bike, the girl's backpack, the bird's nest, my sister's room, Dad's coffee, the baby's bottle, the school's playground, Grandma's kitchen. The possessive is a single small sound that carries the whole relationship, and it settles earlier than most grammatical markers — sixth of Brown's fourteen morphemes, ahead of articles and the third person verb ending — which is what makes it worth targeting directly when it is still missing in a school-age child.
What to listen for
Listen for the marker being omitted rather than misplaced. The dog bone is the characteristic error and it is a whole morpheme missing, which is different from a word order problem. Watch the sound of the marker: dog's ends in a /z/, cat's ends in an /s/, and the student is producing whichever the preceding sound requires without knowing it — that is normal and worth not correcting.
Carrying it home
Whose is this is a question that fits into tidying up, sorting laundry and setting the table. Answering in a full phrase — that's Dad's — gives the model back without a lesson attached.
What's in this activity
- the dog's bone
- the cat's tail
- Mom's keys
- the teacher's desk
- the boy's bike
- the girl's backpack
- the bird's nest
- my sister's room
- Dad's coffee
- the baby's bottle
- the school's playground
- Grandma's kitchen
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- First through fourth, and older students learning English as an additional language.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all twelve phrases play with no account.
- Why does the possessive sound different on different words?
- It assimilates to the sound before it — dog's ends in a /z/ and cat's in an /s/. Speakers do this automatically and it needs no teaching; only the omission is worth targeting.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.