Teaching Possessives with Greedy Apostrophe

I love the book Greedy Apostrophe by Jan Carr. In this book, the punctuation marks all take jobs from the Director. But Greedy Apostrophe wreaks havoc in toy stores and magic shops, inserting apostrophes where they don't belong.

This book makes talking about apostrophes so easy and fun! Like many elementary students, many of my fourth graders start to put apostrophes everywhere in their writing. Greedy Apostrophe gives us such an easy and concrete way to address this problem--after we read the book, I can just say, "Hm...I see a greedy apostrophe in this paragraph," and kids know what to look for.

I created the sheet below to help students apply the ideas in the book as I read it aloud.

Greedy apostrophe

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But the best part of this book is that there is more to it than the grammar rules. Kids like to look at how all of the different punctuation marks have been characterized, and many pick up on the punctuation puns that are scattered throughout the book. Some kids even notice the color scheme--"Why does red always mean angry?" one girl wondered, pointing out the fact that Greedy Apostrophe stands out from the rest of the punctuation marks. Another student drew a picture of Greedy Apostrophe in the Punctuation Pen, with a word bubble: "I've learned my lesson! Only use apostrophes to show ownership!"