Place an apostrophe for singular or plural possession.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere.
Practise it now
Flip the tile, then drag the lens across the gap and READ what comes out. Lock it in only once the sentence you can see actually works.
This exercise practises mark possession alongside its own main skill, Apostrophes: Contraction or Possession.
It covers most of this skill rather than all of it.
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A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Where the apostrophe goes
Read the sentence and notice how many owners it names before the apostrophe.
Every choice is the same noun with the apostrophe in a different place.
Only one runner signed the list in the office, so the … notebook was the only one on the rack.
Choices for the gap: runner's, runner, runners, runners'.
Answer: runner's
How you get there
The sentence says only one runner was there, so there is a single owner and the apostrophe goes before the s: "runner's" means the notebook belonging to that one runner. "runners'" would mean it belonged to several, and "runners" is just a plural with nobody owning anything.
Why the other answers tempt
An apostrophe never makes a word plural - a noun with no owner behind it needs no apostrophe at all.
If they are stuck, say this
Find the words that say how many owners there are, then decide: one owner takes the apostrophe before the s, and a plural that already ends in s takes it after.
Flip the tile, then drag the lens across the gap and READ what comes out. Lock it in only once the sentence you can see actually works.
This engine’s own main skill is Apostrophes: Contraction or Possession. It practises mark possession alongside it, and covers most of it rather than all.
Both spellings sound identical, so your ear is no help and your eye has to do the work. There is one test and it never fails: STRETCH IT OUT. your / you're, whose / who's, their / they're, its / it's - the one with the apostrophe is two words squashed together, and the apostrophe marks the letters that went missing. Put the long version back into the sentence and read it: "the fox slipped into it is burrow" collapses immediately, so that gap wants the plain spelling. The plain spelling is a determiner, which means it has to own the next thing along - a coat, a name, a burrow. Watch out for the ones where a describing word gets in the way: "its enormous shadow" still owns the shadow, so the word straight after the gap is not always the test. That is also why "whose" and "who's" trip people up: "whose" owns something, "who's" is "who is". Run the stretch test out loud every single time and this stops being a guess.
What to say if they get stuck
The lens does the test for you. Stretch the word out: if the long version reads properly, the apostrophe belongs there.
An apostrophe is not a signpost for ownership. It is standing in for letters that have been taken out, which is why the lens can unpack it.
Look at the word straight after the gap. If it is a thing somebody could own, you need the plain spelling. If it is a doing word or a describing word, nothing can own it, and you need the stretched-out one.
Three marks are missing. Pick one from the tray, then tap the hole it belongs in.
This engine’s own main skill is Punctuation. It practises mark possession alongside it.
Punctuation is the writing down of your voice. Read "Slow down Ben you will trip" aloud and you will hear two small pauses and one urgent ending. When you speak straight to somebody by name, that name gets a comma on each side to fence it off from the rest, which is why Ben needs one before and one after: without them, "Slow down Ben" sounds like Ben is the thing being slowed down. The ending is chosen by tone, and a warning shouted at somebody about to fall takes an exclamation mark rather than a full stop. Say the sentence, mark the pauses, then choose the ending that matches the feeling.
What to say if they get stuck
Read it out loud. Every place your voice pauses is a hole that wants a comma.
Ben is being spoken to, not talked about. A name you are addressing gets fenced off on both sides.
The last hole ends the whole thing. Is this a calm statement or a shout of warning?
Confuses a contraction apostrophe with possession.
This is the wrong answer 11+ papers are built to offer, so it is worth watching for directly: a child who does this will look confident and still lose the mark. If it keeps happening on mark possession, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
How mark possession differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: place an apostrophe for singular or plural possession, and it stops where excludes contractions unless contrasted explicitly.
Choose between a possessive form and a contraction in one sentence. Covers forms such as its and it is or your and you are. It excludes ordinary possessive apostrophe placement.
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Place an apostrophe for singular or plural possession. It is one of 41 named English skills in the 11+, in the punctuation strand, and this page carries 2 interactive exercises that practise it.
There is a specific mistake recorded against this skill: confuses a contraction apostrophe with possession. 11+ papers are written to offer exactly that answer, so a child can be confident and still lose the mark. When it keeps happening, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Find the words that say how many owners there are, then decide: one owner takes the apostrophe before the s, and a plural that already ends in s takes it after.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes contractions unless contrasted explicitly. A question past that line is testing a different named English skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The punctuation strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to mark possession are mark a sentence boundary, use a colon and punctuate direct address. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Apostrophe Lens and Punctuation Pinball, embedded on this page. They are the exercises the skill map attaches to mark possession, they run in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. Each also has its own link, so you can send one to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
One wrong answer is a slip, the same wrong answer every time is a habit
A free diagnostic looks at which mistakes repeat across all four subjects, not just whether mark possession was right on the day.
