While I am thankful for a giving God, I am also thankful for English teachers. I always teach my students that those little apostrophes mean something. We cannot just throw them in for fun whenever we would like, or even worse, whenever we have an "s" at the end of the word. The apostrophe means one of two things. 1. It can mean that someone owns something, as in "Susie's doll". Then I draw a little rocket going off (and we make the blast off noise) to show that Susie owns what? Her doll. (Bad art just for fun. It doesn't even look like a doll.)
2. Or the apostrophe means that a letter was left out, as in "don't go" = do not go. I show my students how to make the apostrophe look like the "o" that was left out. I tell them that the word got squished together, and the "o" got really tiny and jumped up into the apostrophe.
