Contractions

Thanks to all the bloggers and Pinterest posters out there who gave me great ideas for teaching contractions! My students enjoyed every minute of it!

We started with the Contraction song. If you're not familiar with the song by Cherry Carl, it goes like this:

Contraction Action (sung to Hokey Pokey)

You pop some letters out.

You put apostrophes in.

You pop some letters out.

That's the way you must begin.

You do contraction Action.

It's as easy as can be.

Come on and sing with me...Oh Yeah! 

Next, I told the students we were going to do contraction surgery. Using inexpensive painters masks I got at Dollar Tree, the students became word surgeons. They each received two thin strips of paper. On the first two thirds they wrote the two words the create the contraction. On the final third they write the contraction endings. To create the contraction, they fold the paper over the letters that "popped out." 

When students finished early, I had contraction centers they could participate in. The centers included: Contraction Lace-Up cards, Puzzle, Memory Match, and Bingo. 

Then, we made contraction kites. The kite has the contraction written on it. The two bows on the string have the two words that make up the contraction. The cloud has a sentence using the contraction. 

Not only did the students have fun with our contraction activities, they also got great practice reading and creating contractions! The best part: watching them wear their contraction surgery masks out to the buses!