Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

This resource uses a flow chart to help guide learners to the correct use of apostrophes.

Editor’s note
Updated Aug 2016. now includes irregular plurals such as ‘children’.

This resource helps learners hear rhymes and recognise corresponding letters/digraphs, rimes and onsets etc. Take simple limericks and poems and get your learners to put them together.

I created my own limericks to match work we had been doing on long vowel sounds (it is not that difficult to do once you get started). Well-known poems and nursery rhymes also proved particularly popular as many knew them already by heart from childhood and some were doing them now with their children.

A Powerpoint suitable for an end of lesson assessment. Includes omissive and possessive apostrophes.

A useful one page reminder about using apostrophes of omission and possession.

Questioning for understanding is a really useful help sheet that encourages learners to ask relevant questions (any topic, any level). Based on Kipling’s “What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who” with teaching ideas and useful links.

For a related resource using the same idea to investigate and write newspaper reports please see Ellie Walsh’s Looking at Newspapers (below).

Written for students who confuse these two words in their writing. Suitable for E2 or dyslexia support at any level. Also useful for introducing the omissive apostrophe. Includes info, examples and tips followed by practice exercises and self evaluation.

A very useful 2 page handout with information, tip and two quick exercises (one for omission, one for possession).

A fun way to consolidate the use of apostrophes in contractions. With differentiation ideas.

Hey diddle diddle is a short poem (with separate Level 1 and Level 2 help sheets / posters) to remind students about mean, median, mode and range.

Two different multi-sensory activities – both make ideal starters.
1) pin-up sentence sorting (choice of generic, IT or beauty cards)
2) apostrophe dominoes.