Contracted Words – Year 2 Apostrophes for Contraction Worksheets

This three-page worksheet for children in Year 2 is an excellent way of revising and practising contracted words.

Set students the following five activities as part of a classroom lesson, for assessment purposes or as a homework task:

• Write a contraction of the words listed
• Add apostrophes to create contractions, identify the two words making up a contracted word and identify three contractions beginning with ‘they’
• Starting with a two image prompts, students combine two word pairs into two contractions and use said words in a written sentence about each picture
• Students identify word pairs inside five different sentences that can be contracted
• Write a short passage in response to an image prompt; the passage must include five contractions that students form themselves out of a list of 10 pre-selected words

What is an apostrophe?

Apostrophes have two different uses:

• Apostrophes for contraction: Showing the place of missing letters (eg I’m for I am)
• Apostrophes for possession: Marking possessives (eg Hannah’s mother)

What is a contracted word?

A contracted word (or contraction) is a short word that you create by putting two words together and dropping one or more of the letters.

You replace these letters with an apostrophe, which shows where the letters would be if you wrote the words in full. Use them in informal writing or direct speech.

Examples of contracted words:

• don’t (do not)
• didn’t (did not)
• isn’t (is not)
• mustn’t (must not)
• they’re (they are)
• I’ll (I will)

National Curriculum English programme of study links

Read words with contractions [for example, I’m, I’ll, we’ll], and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s)

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