Teaching the correct use of omissive
apostrophes in Year 4 using
multimedia software
The school
Situated in a residential area north of a major northern city
this Voluntary Aided Church of England school provides
schooling from reception to Year 4. On entry pupils have
good communication and social skills. By the time pupils
leave school, at the age of nine, attainment in English,
mathematics, science, music and information technology is
well above average.
The teacher
The teacher has been teaching at the school for ten years and
has taught Years 2 and 3 in addition to Year 4. As ICT co-
ordinator she has been instrumental in moving ICT forward
within the school. She enjoys a close working relationship
with colleagues and values the contacts made while
attending in-service courses. She comments on the fact that:
"When attending a course I like to come back inspired with
new ideas to put into practice."
When using ICT she is always conscious of the links that are
required into other subject areas and never teaches ICT in
isolation. She is keen to point out that:
"Although I favour using the computer, unless I have
planned to use it to meet specific learning objectives you
will probably find my computer switched off."
Alongside using ICT in the curriculum she makes good use
of the technology for planning, recording, reporting and
creating resources. Having access to the Internet at home has
proved invaluable in literacy hour preparation. She is
enthusiastic about sharing resources across the Internet and
hopes, in time, this will result in more creative and exciting
teaching.
Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools
Over time she has discovered the best way to improve your
ICT skills is to use it for something which requires more skill
than you currently possess.
"You nearly always find that if you have a project,
something meaningful, that’s where you learn. In other
words, if you’ve got a school magazine to produce, you learn
the skills that are necessary to do that. Learning skills
without then having the need to put them into practice is a
waste of time."
The pupils
Before the project began the pupils had been carrying out
work on using apostrophes correctly. The teacher had used a
number of different strategies which did not use ICT to teach
this aspect of word and sentence level work but found, after
testing, that more than half the class had failed to
understand the use of apostrophe especially when used for
omissions or contractions. Given the amount of input which
had taken place (for example whole class teaching,
individual worksheets, homework and even a demonstration
using a feather duster to ‘tickle out’ letters) the teacher was
rather surprised at the test results and keen to make use of
ICT to try and improve the children’s understanding. Could
ICT help them move from ‘will’nt’ to won’t?
The aim of the project
This project aimed to move pupils’ understanding forward in
the use of the apostrophe. The teacher was keen to involve
all the children in the use of ICT and not just those who
were struggling with the correct usage. It was decided that
in addition to using the ICT to improve apostrophe usage a
program would be used which would also stretch their ICT
skills and contribute to their IT capability. Many of the
children have computers at home and as a consequence some
pupils had high levels of ICT skills.
2 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy
Screen from the ‘Apostrophe Stack’.
The teacher’s choices
The teacher had used a multimedia program in the past to
support a project on Ancient Greece. She had been impressed
with the work the children contributed to the project both at
and away from the computer. However, this program had
proved difficult for some of the children to use and not all
were able to take part in the computer activity because of
the ICT skills demanded by the program. With its ease of use
a newer multimedia program renewed her enthusiasm. She
was convinced that these pupils would rise to the challenge;
especially a challenge where there would be a wider
audience and purpose for their work.
Given the disappointing results of their initial apostrophe
test the teacher thought they could both enhance their ICT
skills and improve their understanding of the apostrophe by
creating a multimedia presentation to teach other children
about correct apostrophe usage. She thought that getting
them to identify how to teach aspects of correct usage would
develop their awareness and understanding of how to use
apostrophes correctly themselves.
The teacher chose to use HyperStudio, a multimedia program
which allows pupils to mix text, graphics, sound and video
so that the pupils could consider how to communicate their
ideas effectively. As the teacher had never used this package
before she was enthusiastic about learning alongside the
pupils.
It was explained to the children that they were to produce a
multimedia presentation which could be used by other
children to help them understand the use of apostrophes. It
Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools
was made clear to the children that although the final
product would appear on the computer the majority of the
work would take place away from the computer. This did not
in anyway dampen their enthusiasm.
How the teacher developed the
project
The teacher used a brainstorming session to get the project
underway. The children were asked to come up with ideas on
how they might teach the use of apostrophes to other pupils.
Initially they could only come up with "test them". Further
discussion led by the teacher produced more useful ideas
with the children agreeing that if they could establish some
rules and examples this might work. Discussions also took
place about presentation with the children deciding they
wanted a ‘character’ who appeared when help was
requested. Many other ideas were forthcoming, some
discarded, others making their way into the final
presentation.
Screen showing the ‘character’ competition winners.
The teacher organised a ‘character’ competition where all the
pupils submitted a drawing; the drawings were all displayed
with pupils voting for their top three. This enabled the
whole class to work on the project at the same time and
increased the motivation for the task as well as supplying a
deadline for completion. In additional sessions children
worked on colour schemes, and planned the layout of the
‘stack’ (the series of multimedia pages which made up the
presentation). They also agreed on what the rules might be
for omissive apostrophes (e.g. it’s and didn’t but not
children’s which is an example of a possessive apostrophe)
and came up with hints, tips and examples of use.
The session with the children where they finally decided on

the rules is worth particular consideration. It involved the
children in word level work distinguishing uses of the
apostrophe as well as sentence level work identifying
patterns in how apostrophes were used. In pairs the children
were given a list showing the original two words followed by
the contraction e.g. your are - you’re. They were asked to use
colour pencils to highlight groups which they thought were
similar. Many children looked at the number of missing
letters and created a grouping this way. Others came up with
more sophisticated patterns. Once they had finished, a whole
class discussion took place on what the groups had found
and finally a consensus was reached which everyone agreed
to and understood.
Screen showing some of the pupils’ rules.
The teacher thinks that encouraging the children to
formulate their own rules for apostrophe proved a powerful
teaching strategy:
"Asking the children, rather than telling them that ‘this is
the rule’, ‘it always does this’, is more powerful. Asking
them, in groups, to find the rules and report back in a
plenary session is a good way to get them to focus upon a
particular aspect."
Only at this stage did work begin on the computer. The
children had assistance with some aspects of the stack but
were confident in adding pictures, sound, linking pages and
creating simple animation. The completed stack was
demonstrated to parents, governors and other members of
staff who were suitably impressed with the pupils’
understanding of creating multimedia presentations as well
as their knowledge of apostrophes.
The ICT had acted as a catalyst for the class. They worked
enthusiastically together on what is potentially a rather dry
subject. In addition to using ICT with the children the
Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools
Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy 3
teacher was motivated to use this program because she
wanted to improve her own ICT skills. Learning with the
children is something she enjoys and felt this was an
excellent opportunity to develop her own ICT skills.
The teacher used ICT as a vehicle to encourage the children
to work as a team. Although the stack was considered by the
children as the final result, for the teacher it was the
thinking that had gone into establishing the rules, agreeing
the examples, hints and tips and working collectively as a
class that was important. In moving their understanding of
omissive apostrophes forward, the work that had taken place
away from the computer was more important than what had
actually been achieved using the computer.
As the project unfolded the teacher became increasingly
aware of how complex the teaching of this particular aspect
of word and sentence level work was. The teacher was
impressed with the quality of discussion which took place in
the whole class sessions and with the effort the children put
into trying to make meaning for other students. As with her
project on Ancient Greece she felt it was the creation of
multimedia and the preparation work which that entailed
which had benefited the children’s learning and not just the
use of the technology. The teacher is not convinced that the
use of the completed stack would necessarily move other
children’s understanding of apostrophes forward, though the
children could have used it to try it out on their peers.
The class had the use of an additional computer for the
duration of the project however, this second computer, while
a bonus for writing and painting, was not in fact used for the
development of the final stack. The teacher is quite happy to
work with a single computer on a project such as this.
The results from the testing
Before the project began the teacher had administered her
own test, after considerable teaching of the correct use of
apostrophes, to determine pupils’ understanding. It was
decided that the same test should be administered on
completion of the project. The graph below shows the
original test score together with the test scores obtained, by
the children, at the end of the project. The teacher was very
satisfied with the improvements made by the children on
this test. However results from the writing task indicate that
only some of the children were able to convert their
improved test results to corresponding improvements in
4 Ways forward with ICT: Developing literacy

using omissive apostrophes correctly in their general writing.
While it is not possible to say that using ICT was directly
responsible for the improvement in test scores, the results do
suggest that ICT activities with clear literacy objectives can
contribute to improving pupils’ understanding of aspects of
punctuation.
Features of ICT
While creating their multimedia presentation the children
were making use of the speed and automatic functions of the
program. They were controlling the presentation with the
use of navigational buttons and creating text frames which
allowed speech feedback. In addition the pupils used other
buttons to automatically display text and images, play
recorded speech and create animations.
The children were able to make use of the provisionality
which ICT offers when they made changes with ease. For
instance if a card in the stack was not in the correct order
the program allowed the children to change the order simply
by dragging the card to the correct place.
effectively not only when to use ICT to improve literacy, but
also when not to use it.
The teacher also wished to develop her own ICT skills as
part of the work with the children. She feels her new skills
can be put to use in other areas of the curriculum. As a
consequence of being involved in the project she feels much
more confident about making use of ICT in the literacy hour
both for whole class teaching and for use by the children in
their group work.
As the work progressed she realised that the teaching of
apostrophes was more complex than she had previously
thought and that this perhaps explained some of the
difficulties she had experienced in teaching this aspect of
word level work before. For example even omissive
apostrophes are complex. Some follow a pattern such as
didn’t and wouldn’t but then other similar contractions, such
as won’t; don’t follow this pattern. The approach she took
enabled her to understand the difficulties the children were
having and in using this knowledge to improve their
understanding.

Summary Further Reading

Troutner, J. (1996) Yes they put on quite a show but what
In this project the teacher was able to use ICT effectively as a
did they learn? Technology Connection, Vol 3, p. 15-17.
catalyst in teaching a challenging aspect of word level work.
The work was planned around the computer. However, less This article looks at the development of a framework to
work was undertaken by pupils actually using ICT than in assess multimedia projects.
whole class and group sessions where ICT was not used.
Waugh, D. (1998) ‘Practical approaches to teaching
Although this was in part due to the fact that the class have
punctuation in the primary school’ Reading 32 (2) 14 - 17
only one computer permanently available, the teacher would
choose to repeat the activity in the same way because of the Collins, J., Hammond, M. and Wellington, J. (1997) Teaching
quality of work the children produced without using ICT in and Learning with Multimedia, London: Routledge
the whole class and group sessions. She was able to choose

Results from the teacher’s apostrophe tests

14

12

10
No. correct
(Max. 14) 8

2
The teacher prepared a test to see how effective
0
her teaching had been. This chart shows how
successfully the pupils learned the correct usage of
Pupils 1st test
apostrophe before and after the work they did.
2nd test

Effective pedagogy using ICT in literacy and numeracy in primary schools