Lesson video

Hello everyone.

My name's Mrs. Riley, and I'm here today to teach you some new grammar.

In our lesson today, we're focusing on apostrophes.

Let's get started.

The outcome of today's lesson is to show how an apostrophe works for plural possession.

These are our key words we'll be using in today's lesson.

Let's start off by just saying them out loud, and then we'll think about what each one means.

Are you ready? My turn, your turn.

Apostrophes for possession.

Well done.

Plural.

Belong.

Well done.

An apostrophe for possession is a punctuation mark, like a full stop or a comma, that can show if a noun belongs to another plural noun.

Now don't worry if that hasn't quite sunk in, 'cause we're going to come back to this in later in the lesson, we're going to talk about what all of these things mean.

Plural means more than one.

More than one.

Anything that you can see in your room where you are working now, if there's more than one of something, it would be plural.

To belong is to be the property of someone or something.

For example, this is my phone and it belongs to me.

It is my property.

So in our lesson today, we have two learning cycles.

First, we're going to think a little bit more about what singular and plural means and what the difference is.

And then we're gonna look more specifically at apostrophes for plural possession.

So common nouns are, common nouns name people, places and things.

They do not need a capital letter unless they're at the start of a sentence.

Now you might be thinking Mrs. Riley, if a noun names a person like a name, like my name Mrs. Riley, it does have to have a capital letter.

But that would be a proper noun, Mrs. Riley.

So that would, that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about common nouns, which would be something like this, woman.

So woman is a common noun, whereas my specific name, Mrs. Riley, would be a proper noun with a capital letter.

But woman is a common noun and it doesn't need a capital letter unless it started the sentence.

Playground is another common noun.

Body, wheel, country, and game.

Now again, if we took a specific country like England, it would be a proper noun and it would have a capital letter.

But if we were just talking about a country, not a specific one, that would be a common noun with no capital letter.

So these are all common nouns.

What are they? Well done, common nouns.

Common nouns can be singular or plural.

The word singular means only one.

It comes from the word single.

Let's see single in context in some familiar phrases.

So some phrases you might have seen before.

A single digit.

So if you were going to write a single digit number, it would be only one digit.

A single bed.

A single bed is designed for one person to sleep in, not lots of people to sleep in or not two people to sleep in.

A single parent.

Now we all have different types of families.

Some of us might have two parents, a mom and a dad or two dads.

But sometimes you might have a single parent, which means there's only one parent.

Single file.

If you were going to form a line in single file, it would mean you wouldn't be lining up in twos or pairs or threes.

You would just be lining up in single file.

So only one person in each row.

So let's check what we've just learnt.

Which of these is a singular, remember, only one, common noun? A, children.

B, monkey.

C, women.

Have a look carefully at those and decide which you think is a singular, only one, common noun.

Pause the video now.

Well done.

The correct answer is B, monkey.

Children is, if I'm talking about the children in the class, I'm talking about more than one.

So it would be plural.

And woman is one of those quite tricky words we need to watch out for.

Because if it's woman with an a, woman, it means there's only, we're talking about one woman.

But if it's were men with an E on the end, then we're talking about more than one.

So it would be plural.

So monkey is the only singular common noun.

If a noun is singular, this means there is only one.

If a noun is singular, this means there is only? Well done, I'm just checking you're all listening.

So here is a car.

If a noun is plural, this means there are more than one.

Here are some cars.

The car on the left is singular.

The car on the right is plural.

First, we have one car, and then we've got more than one.

So it's plural.

Car and cars.

Usually, a plural common noun ends in S, in the letter S.

We can see that here in the word cars.

To turn this word car into the plural version, we add an S.

One car, two cars.

Sometimes a plural common noun does not end in S.

By reading and hearing the word in a sentence, we can still tell though that it's plural.

For example, the word fish.

Now, if you were saying to someone, if you were scuba diving in the sea and you said, "Wow, look at that fish." Because you saw an amazing fish with brightly coloured fins.

Wow, look at that fish.

There's only one, you would say fish.

But if you got out of the sea and someone said, "Oh, how was it?" And you said, "Oh my goodness, I saw so many fish." The word hasn't changed.

When we were talking about one fish or so many fish, plural, the word has stayed the same.

So sometimes we have to watch out for words like that.

Men.

Again, there's no S on the end of this common noun.

If we have one man, it's man.

And if we have more than one plural, it's men.

So the word men shows us it's plural, but there's no S on the end of it.

Children, we've looked at that example already.

One child, singular, but lots of children, plural.

Feet.

Again, we would talk about one foot singular, but two feet.

Again, this is plural, but it doesn't end in an S.

And sheep.

Now sheep is like fish.

If you said, "Oh no, this sheep has hurt himself." One singular sheep.

Or if you said "All the sheep have escaped from the field." Plural sheep, the word, like fish, doesn't change.

So again, that's when we need to be particularly careful of.

And teeth.

We would talk about one tooth, my tooth is wobbly, but we would say the dentist is going to check all my teeth.

So again, we've got a plural version of the word that doesn't end in an S.

So we can see here that whilst common nouns that are plural often end in S, sometimes they don't.

So we need to just be careful of these ones, which are a little bit more unusual.

Okay, let's check what we've just learned.

Which of these are plural, that means more than one, common nouns? A, geese.

B, city.

C, people.

There might be more than one correct answer.

Pause the video now.

Well done.

The correct answers, or let's go through each one.

So A, geese.

If it was only one, we would say goose.

Singular is goose.

So geese is plural.

It means more than one.

A city.

Hmm.

Now, if there was more than one city that we were talking about, we'd say cities.

So this one is singular.

It's not plural.

People.

If I was talking about a specific person, I would say person.

But if I say people, it means there's plural, more than one.

So again, geese and people are two of those ones that, those plural common nouns that don't end in an S.

Sometimes a singular noun ends in the letter S.

So we need to, we can't just assume if any word ends in an S that it's plural.

So let's check these ones that we need to be careful of as well.

So just because the word ends in S, it doesn't mean it's plural.

Let's see some familiar singular nouns that end in S.

Class.

This is my class.

There's only one, but it ends in an S.

Physics.

Physics is a subject, but it's only one.

We're talking about one subject.

The news.

I'm going to read the news.

The news again is singular, but it ends in an S.

Bus.

The bus was late.

We're talking about only one.

Dress.

My dress has a rip in it.

We're talking about only one.

So we have learned that as a general rule, if a noun ends in an S, it might mean it's plural.

There's more than one.

For example, cars.

But sometimes some singular nouns like dress and in S as well.

So we can't always assume if we see an S that it's plural.

Okay, let's check what we've just learnt.

I would like you to match the common nouns with the correct tags.

So the common nouns are dresses, class, fish, and child.

The tags are, so one of these, it is unknown whether it is singular or plural.

So we would have to look at the rest of the sentence to see if we would talking about one, singular, or more than one, plural.

One of these is just a singular common noun.

One of these is a plural common noun.

And one of these is a singular common noun that ends in an S.

So you might look at it and think, oh, it's plural, but actually it's just a singular common noun that ends in an S.

So can you pause the video while you try to match the common nouns to the correct tags? Well done.

Let's go through the answers.

So, first of all, we have dresses.

This is a plural common noun.

One dress, singular, but lots of dresses.

Class is a singular common noun that ends in an S.

We're talking about only one class, but it just happens to end in an S.

Fish, unknown whether it's singular or plural.

We would have to look at the rest of the sentence.

For example, if I said, "Wow, look at that colourful fish." You might think I'm talking about one.

Or if I said, "Wow, look at all of those colourful fish." I would be talking about more than one, or it could be plural.

And finally, child is just a singular common noun.

We're just talking about one child.

It's time for your first task.

I would like you to sort the singular and plural common nouns.

So along the left there you've got a list of common nouns.

Some of them are singular, which means there's only one.

Some of them are plural, which means there's more than one.

You've got a table with two columns, and you need to just put each noun in the correct column.

So you'll look at each word, for example, the first one is goose.

And you think, right goose, is that singular? We're talking about one? Or is it plural, is there more than one? And then you will write the word goose in the correct column.

So pause the video now while you complete this task.

Good luck.

Excellent, well done.

Shall we go through the answers together? And then you can check your work.

Okay, so goose is a singular common noun.

There's just one.

If it was plural, it would be geese.

Beds.

That's plural, I'm talking about more than one.

Teeth.

That's plural.

If we were talking about one, it would be tooth, but teeth is when we are talking about more than one tooth.

Girl is singular.

There's just one.

People is plural.

The singular version would be person, but people is when we're talking about more than one person.

It's plural.

Women, that's one of those tricky ones we looked at earlier, is plural.

If it was singular, it would be woman with an A rather than an E.

And dress is singular.

You might have spotted an S and thought, oh, it must be plural.

But if it's actually just a singular common noun that happens to end in in an S.

So well done for completing that task.

And now it's time to look at our second learning cycle.

We've learned all about what singular and plural mean.

And now we're going to be focusing on plural words, because we're going to be looking at how we can use apostrophes, which remember is a piece of punctuation, for plural possession.

So have a quick fidget, maybe.

We're halfway through our lesson.

Maybe have a little wriggle, maybe have a little stretch.

And are you ready to start learning again? Here we go.

Most plural nouns in English end in S.

I'm gonna take that away.

Most plural nouns in English end in what letter? Well done, they end in the letter S.

Here are some example.

Teachers, songs, houses, fields, families, oranges.

All of these are common nouns.

And all of these are plural because they have an S at the end of them.

If we wanted to take an example, the oranges.

So imagine you've got a lovely bowl of oranges that you've just bought from the market.

Imagine there might be about five or six lovely, big orange oranges.

If we wanna say that the skin belongs to the oranges, we could say this.

The skin belonging to the oranges is bumpy.

It's just, imagine you're holding one in your hand and imagine you feel the skin and it feels a bit bumpy.

So we're talking about all of those oranges and the skin belonging to them.

But it's quite a long way to say it.

The skin belonging to the oranges is bumpy.

Hey mom, the skin belonging to these oranges is bumpy.

It's quite a long way of saying it.

So instead, we can use an apostrophe.

The plural word oranges already ends in an S.

So we've already learned that when we use an apostrophe to show possession, when something belongs to someone, we do an apostrophe S.

Mrs. Riley's water bottle.

We would have Mrs. Riley, apostrophe S, water bottle to show this is something that belongs to me.

I possess it.

But oranges already ends in an S.

So in this situation, we just add the apostrophe after the S.

Let's see what that looks like.

We place the word skin straight after oranges to make it a pair.

Here's the improved sentence.

The orange's skin is bumpy.

The orange's skin is bumpy.

And can you see, we've got the apostrophe after the S.

When a plural noun possesses another noun, we add the apostrophe for possession after the S.

Let's just say that again, because this is really important learning.

When a plural noun, so for example, let's take the horses.

I'm talking about all the horses in the field.

So they are a plural noun.

The horses, if I'm talking about their hay, something they possess, something that belongs to them, the horses' hay, we would add the apostrophe after the S in horses.

The children are learning the words that belong to some poems. Again, that's quite a long way for me to say that.

If a class of children are learning the words that belonged to some poems, poems is my noun, my plural noun.

But instead, I could just say, "The children are learning the poems' words." There's the word poems. My plural common noun.

It already ends in an S.

So I'm going to put my apostrophe after the S.

I like the playground that belongs to the students.

Again, that's a bit clunky, saying it that way around.

So instead I'm going to say, "I like the students' playground." The students' playground.

The playground belongs to the students.

They possess it.

But because students is plural and ends in an S, I have the apostrophe after the S.

The farmers turn the steering wheels that belong to the tractors.

Again, that's a bit loud, a bit long and clunky.

So instead, I'll say, "The farmers turn the tractors' steering wheels." Tractors is my plural common noun.

It ends in an S.

And I have my apostrophe after the S to show that the steering wheels belong to the tractors.

The words that belong to some poems, the playground that belongs to the students, the steering wheel that belongs to the tractors.

In all of these examples, we have something that belongs to something else.

But the thing that owns it is plural.

The poems, the students, the tractors.

And because it's plural, we have the apostrophe after the S.

Okay, let's check what we've just learned.

'Cause this is, that was a lot of learning.

How would the apostrophe for plural possession be used for each of these ideas? Let's take a look at them.

So here's an example, one to look at together.

The beliefs that belong to the Christians.

Instead, we could just say the Christians' belief.

The Christians is my noun, my plural noun.

And because it ends in an S, I'm going to have my apostrophe after the S.

So here are the ones you are going to have a go at.

The pens that belong to the boys.

The leads that belonged to the dogs.

The dreams that belonged to the pupils.

So for each one, you should just have two words or three words.

The mm mm.

The mm mm.

And the mm mm.

So you need to first of all identify what is the noun that owns something? So for example, in the first one, it was the Christians.

And then what is it that they own? What belongs to them? The Christians' belief.

And then you need to think, where's my apostrophe going to go to show that possession? So pause the video now while you have a go at this check for understanding.

Well done, let's go through the answers together.

The first one, the pens that belonged to the boys, would be the boys' pens.

The pens belonged to them.

So instead, we're going to say the boys' with the apostrophe after the S to show the possession of pens.

The leads that belong to the dogs would be the dogs' leads.

If it was just the dog's lead, just one dog, singular, we would say the dog apostrophe S leads.

But because it's plural, the dogs' leads, there's lots of them, we have our apostrophe after the S to show that this is plural.

The pupils' dreams. Again, if it was just one pupil, we would say the pupil singular apostrophe S dreams. But we've got more than one pupil, it's plural.

So we would say the pupils' with apostrophe after the S to show it's plural, dreams. The dreams that belong to the pupil, pupils, the pupils' dreams. Well done if you got any of those correct.

Remember that not all plural nouns end in an S.

We had those exceptions earlier, didn't we? Children, men, women, geese, feet, teeth, and mice.

All of these common nouns are plural, there's more than one, but they don't end in an S.

These are exceptions to the rule.

For these plural nouns, we just add apostrophe S as we do for singular nouns.

For example, the children's work, the men's songs, the women's ideas, the geese's feathers, the mice's trap.

And the reason we can do that is because we already know that they're this, each of these words is plural by the way it sounds.

We know when we're talking about children that we're not just talking about one child, we're talking about more than one child.

So we don't, we just can show the apostrophe S like we would do with our regular singular nouns.

To decide how to use the apostrophe for possession with plural nouns, we need to follow these steps.

So here's some steps to follow.

We take the noun, for example, tooth.

Everyone point at a tooth.

Or knife.

Hopefully there's no knives around.

We make it plural.

Teeth.

Hmm, what would be the plural for knife? One knife, but lots of? Well done, lots of knives.

Does the plural end in an S? Does teeth end in an S? Thumbs up or thumbs down? No.

Does knives end in an S? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Yes.

So teeth, no, and knives, yes.

If it doesn't end in an S, we add apostrophe S, just like we would do for a singular noun.

The teeth's.

If it does end in an S, we add an apostrophe after the S.

The teeth's strength meant that it could, they could tear through the meat.

The knives' handles were made of plastic.

So we can see those steps to help us.

Let's go through the steps again.

We take the noun, for example, tooth or knife.

We make it plural, teeth or knives.

We then look and see, does it end in an S? If it doesn't like teeth, we just add apostrophe.

S.

If it does end in an S, like knives, we just add an apostrophe after the S.

These are the rules that can help us use an apostrophe for plural possession correctly.

Okay, let's check what we've just learned.

Aisha, Jacob and Sam, three children, bought a red bike together.

Which sentence describes this using apostrophe for plural possession correctly? A, the child's bike was bright red.

Remember we're talking about the Aisha, Jacob and Sam.

They all, the bike belongs to all three of them.

B, the children's bike was bright red.

C, the childrens' bike was bright red.

So those two sound the same, but look carefully at where the apostrophe is to see which one you might think is correct, or it could be A.

So pause the video and decide if you think A, B, or C uses the apostrophe for plural possession correctly.

Okay, let's go through each one.

The child's bike was bright red.

Child is what we use for singular, not plural.

And we know we've got Aisha, Jacob, and Sam.

So it should be children, so that one's not right.

B, the children's bike was bright red.

Now, children, if I go through my checklist, child is singular, children as plural.

It doesn't end in an S, so I just add apostrophe S.

So I think that one is correct.

In the third example, C, the childrens' bike was bright red, this is incorrect because the word children doesn't end with an S.

So we would use, the apostrophe should go before the S and not afterwards.

Childrens' isn't a word.

Children is the correct plural noun.

Okay, it's time for your last task for today.

In this task, you are going to write a sentence using each idea using an apostrophe for plural possession.

Here's an example.

The field that belongs to the cows.

Again, that's quite long way of saying it.

So instead you would just say the cows' fields.

But, we're not just saying that in this task.

We're going a bit further and we're actually writing a full sentence.

So what could you say about the cows' field? And then you, in this example, the farmer checks the fence in the cows' field.

You could say anything about the cows' field.

You could say the cows' field had a fence surrounding it.

You could say the cows' field was full of lush, green grass.

There's lots of things you could say.

The really important thing is are you using the apostrophe for plural possession correctly? In this example, cows, singular is cow, plural is cows.

I'm just going through my checklist.

Cows ends in an S, so I have my apostrophe after the S.

The cows' field.

the field belongs to all of those cows.

Here are your ideas to use to form a sentence.

Number one, the straps that belong to the shoes.

So, well, let's go through each one first.

Two, the nests that belong to the geese.

Three, the hay that belongs to the horses.

Four, the surgery that belongs to the doctors.

So remember, first you are picking out, so in the first one, the straps that belong to the shoes.

So you would say the shoes' straps, and you'd think about where your apostrophe goes in shoes.

Is it going to go after the S or is it going to go before the S? And then you are going to think about a sentence.

What could my sentence be? The shoes' straps, and then you can build your sentence.

Maybe say it out loud, write it down, and go back and check that all important apostrophe is in the right place.

So good luck with this task.

You can pause the video now.

Well done.

Let's go through the answers.

The shoes' straps were brightly coloured.

Now you probably had a different sentence to me, but the important thing is that we all should have had our apostrophe after the S, because shoes ends in an S.

So the apostrophe goes after the S.

The geese's nests are over by the lake.

Now geese is plural, but it doesn't end in an S.

So we use apostrophe S just as if it was singular.

Again, your sentence might be different, which is fine.

The important thing is that you've got your apostrophe where I've got it in that example.

The foxes were nesting in the horses' hay.

Again, your sentence will be different, but the horses' hay, horses is plural.

It ends in an S.

So my apostrophe goes after the S.

Seven people were waiting at the doctors' surgery.

Doctors' surgery, doctors is plural.

It ends in an S.

So the apostrophe goes after the S to show the surgery belongs to those doctors.

So well done for giving that a go.

That was quite a tricky task and you did really well to complete it.

Let's summarise what we've learned today.

We've learned that apostrophes can be used for possession for singular or plural nouns.

Remember, when you possess something, you own it.

An apostrophe for plural possession helps us show that a noun belongs to more than one other noun.

Usually, the apostrophe for plural possession is placed after the S at the end of a plural noun.

If a plural noun ends in a letter that is not an S, like teeth, an apostrophe S is placed after the end of a plural noun.

So really important to check when you see a plural noun, does it end in an S or does it not end in an S? To decide which rule you are going to use.

Well done for your hard work today.

You've done really, really well.

Perhaps this week you could spot look when you're reading any apostrophes, and you can decide, has it been used for a singular noun or a plural noun? And if it is a plural noun, if there's more than one, has it been placed after the S, because the plural noun ends in an S? Or has it been placed before the S? Have they added an apostrophe S at the end of it? So really try this week to look out for those apostrophes and check that the rules have been used correctly.

You could be a teacher, checking all the apostrophes have been used correctly.

So well done, and hopefully I'll see you for some more learning another time.

Bye.