Possessive Noun Practice for Middle School

Teachers are often looking for possessive noun practice for Middle School students. It can be tricky to teach middle school students about possessive nouns because they are often confusing possessive nouns with plural nouns – it can be so easy to forget an apostrophe, but these apostrophes make a critical difference between a plural noun and a possessive noun! Read on for information about what possessive nouns are, links to possessive noun practice for middle school students online, and a few exercises for middle school students to practice on their own.

What Is a Possessive Noun?

A possessive noun shows possession of an object by another object. These nouns are actually used as adjectives, because they describe what other nouns are possessed by. It is easy to pick out a possessive noun in a sentence: they are nouns, followed by an apostrophe and the letter S. Sometimes, if a noun ends in an S already, it will be followed by an apostrophe. Here are a few example sentences that contain possessive nouns: 

• Susan’s brother is a very nice man.
• I like Lizzie’s recipe for cupcakes – they are so tasty!
• My sister’s sneakers are really stinky.
• Under the dim moonlight, I can see the tree’s shadow on the ground.
• Unlike your mom’s lasagna, my vegan sister’s lasagna contains no meat.

Now, can you tell what is wrong with the following nouns? 

• Andrews baseball hat is blue.
• The suns rays are very warm.
• This hamburgers bun is covered in sesame seeds.

These nouns are all supposed to be possessive nouns – but they are missing apostrophe’s between the end of the noun and the S! This makes them look like plural nouns instead of possessive nouns. 

What is wrong with these sentences that use possessive nouns? 

• I like to eat chocolate’s with cherries in the middle.
• Bagel’s are very tasty with cream cheese on top.
• I went to the movie’s yesterday to see a thriller.

In these instances, we have used possessive nouns incorrectly. These should actually be plural nouns instead – to correct them, just be sure to take out the apostrophe between the noun and the S! 

Possessive Noun Practice for Middle School

The best way to have middle school students practice their possessive nouns is to have them do worksheets. You can find a lot of these worksheets online, or you can make your own. Just be sure to mix up some plural nouns with possessive nouns, and you should be all set. 

Some people believe that it is okay to use an additional S after a noun that ends in an S when making it a possessive noun. Look at the following examples: 

• Jesus’s followers are called Christians.
• Jesus’ followers are called Christians.

Many people will say both are correct, and you can see both used in English often. However, you might see the second option written more often than the first. 

Links to Online Practice

Here are a few links to games. worksheets and quizzes online that you can share with your students – possessive noun practice for middle school students is very easy to find online, and can you’re your struggling students improve a lot outside of the classroom. 

• Soft Schools.com offers a quiz about possessive nouns. Try it yourself – can you get a good score?

• At Riva Search Page there are a lot of worksheets about possessive nouns.  Either print them out for your students to complete in class, assign them as homework or review for a grammar test, or modify them to tailor them to the needs of your class.

For more information about possessive noun practice for middle school, read through textbooks on grammar for students who are in middle school, and see what it suggests.