[Denis DNT]

For sure your young learners and probably adults do confuse these words "I, my, me, mine, / you, your, yours, etc. Don't blame them so much. These words are truly confusing. Sometimes we even confuse them more by using those "big" words that refer to these "small" words:Subject / Object Personal Pronouns, Possessive adjectives / Pronouns, etc. Put all these terms aside and try the following game:

Step 1. Tell them you're goign to teach them a poem. (My second graders call it the "Toy Poem").

Step 2. Let them copy these four sentences in their notebooks as you write them on the board too.

I have a toy
The toy is for me
It is my toy
The toy is mine

Step 3. Ask them to highlight the words "I" in line one, "me" in line two, "my" in line three and "mine" in line four. They could highlight these words or circle them or write them in colors, etc any way to show that these words are the focus.

Step 4. Get them to say the four lines repeatedly until it becomes a very easy poem to recite. The call that verse 1 of the song or poem.

Step 5. Then tell them that the poem has other versions. Then change the "I" in line one to "you" and let them see how the other words that were highlighted change too. Hence verse 2 of the poem:
You have a toy
The toy is for you
It is your toy
The toy is yours
Step 6. This second verse should be easier for them to recite
Step 7. Depending on the level of your kids and how fast they can memorize, move on to the other versions with "He", "She", "It", "We", "They" and "Jack"
In all you will have 8versions. Version 8 is for you to teach how to use the apostrophe 's.
Step 8. Teach version 8 only when your kids are already very used to the game. It goes thus:
Jack has a toy
The toy is for Jack
It is Jack's toy
The toy is jack's
Step 9. By now your kids should be playing with he poem and some of them replacing the word toy with of there nouns like book, pen, house, candy, etc. Push them to try with any other words they would like. In fact they are about to master four solid sentence structures that will help them at all levels both in writing and in speaking.
Step 10. Writing activity. Make a chart of Possessives for the classroom. Students will have to make individual charts and then jointly make a gaint one of the classroom. The chart has four columns and eight rows. Check it out on the section of worksheets.
Cheers!

[jandsonsud]

I guess this activity is awesome...I teach english in Br and it's hard to explain about the pronouns in english.

[abctj]

hi denis,

since i've just started w/ esl here in china i'm sure this will help!

thanks!!!

~ tj

[Denis DNT]

You are welcome.
You can find many more downloadable worksheets I use myself at my website.

[abctj]

hi again,

is it stupid of me to ask about how 'it' works in this poem?

it is it's toy?

rsvp...

~ tj

[Denis DNT]

No it is not stupid. It doesn't sound well but the sentence structure is correct
It will help your students see and understand the difference between "It's" = "It is" and "Its" = the ... of...

It has a toy
It is its toy
The toy is for it
The toy is its

NB: The possessive "its" doesn't have an apostrophe btween the t and the s.

Crazy English grammar!

[abctj]

denis,

thanks for that reassurance!! i wrote it on the white board and it didn't look right so tried to change the poem (and that didn't work), so all in all might have made a confusing situation worse. it's even harder since i don't speak chinese and have to rely on a native teacher (who is hell bent on teaching for exams!!) that i had to fire since the 'styles' of teaching are so different from the usa and china.
in other words... thank the gods this is the last week of the summer session before i can take some semblence of a vacation.

oh... i have a bad habit w/ using it's in the wrong context! thanks for that reminder.

i'm glad i found this forum! it may be one of the few places i can 'vent'... thanks for listening!

~ tj

[Denis DNT]

At first my students couldn't get it too.
I had a huge copy of it pasted on the wall.
After we did the Jack version of the poem:

(Jack has a toy
The toy is for Jack
It is Jack's toy
The toy is Jack's)

They completely understood it and helped me to explain the possessives to lower level students.


And yeah you are right, in schools where they target just exams, it's hard to get them to look at some other language areas that don't really show up in the exams.
Good luck mate!

[lannguyen]

Thank you very much for your "TOY POEM". Now I can know how to explain my student about possessive case.

[Michael Kilduff]

I teach Japanese kids aged 7 to 10. I think that it is necessary to make the language physical. I feel the above, brilliant as it is, might overwhelm my students. Of course, songs or chants are great but there is adanger of just 'parroting'. I would try and teach 'my' and 'your' physically through objects. And later introduce 'his', 'her'. This would be fine with a small group. With larger groups you can then show the uses of 'That's Amy's bag'. But thank you very much for the wonderful suggestions.

[collinsrachel@hotmail.com]

What a great idea. I will try it tommorrow.

Thanks

[Denis DNT]

Let me know how the activity goes with your students. If you run into difficulties I'll tell you other tricks and games around this topic.

[lemoncake]

Hi Denis,

I am currently in a in the TESOL program and am looking forward to teaching English overseas in the near future. I can't believe how much I am learning just by reading your posting regarding possessives.

Thank you for posting this activity.

[Denis DNT]

You're welcome Lemoncake, the training we teachers go through in order to obtain the certificates is one thing, the reality in the classroom is another. These realities over the years tend to give you the creativity to design such activities.
Have you used the worksheet in a classroom setting yet?