South Dakota ELA 2.L.2.d

ELA2nd GradeLanguage

The Standard

2.L.2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

Use an apostrophe to form contractions and singular possessives.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students join two words into a shorter word and put an apostrophe where letters are missing. They also use an apostrophe to show that something belongs to one person or thing.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student writes “don't” for “do not” and points to the missing o. Given a picture of one dog with a bowl, the student writes “the dog's bowl” and puts the apostrophe before s.
Common Misconceptions: Students write “dont” because they hear one word and forget that a letter is missing. They write “dogs bowl” when one dog owns the bowl. Some add an apostrophe to a plain plural, such as “three dog's.”
How to Assess It: On an exit ticket, give “do not” and a picture of one cat beside its toy. Ask students to write the contraction and label the toy to show whose it is.

Lesson moves

Give pairs “do” and “not” cards to join with an apostrophe, then have them label a toy dog and its bowl “dog's bowl.”
Ask, “Who owns the leash in ‘the dog's leash’?” Have students draw the dog and leash, then explain where the apostrophe goes.
Play apostrophe relay: read “she is” and “the bowl of one cat” aloud; teams write “she's” and “cat's bowl.”
Put a name tag on a classroom water bottle and have students write “Ava's water bottle” on a sticky note beside it.

Free download