Whose Is It? An activity to practice possessive pronouns

How do you like to teach possessive pronouns? Since I was working one-on-one with my beginner student, Natasha, I focused first on mine and yours. We put personal items in a basket and took turns taking them back out. As each object was pulled back out, we identified whose object it was or wasn’t. For example, “This is my cell phone. It isn’t yours.” I think this is an easy task to recreate in a classroom. Groups of three or four students could place a few personal items on a desk and take turns identifying to whom everything belongs. Putting things into the pile, students could use possessive adjectives, “These are my keys.” Taking the objects out, possessive pronouns should be used, “These are not mine. These are yours. Here.”

If you have a group that enjoys a little silliness, a fun way to work in practice with the other possessive pronouns could be to ask four students at a time to remove their shoes and place them at the front of the room. Two other students, who were not allowed to observe that first step, could be asked to guess to whom each pair of shoes belongs. For example, let’s say you have two women and two men remove their shoes. Looking at a pair of men’s shoes, Student A says, “These are not women’s shoes. These are not theirs.” (Pointing to the ladies.) Student B adds, “I think these are his.” (Pointing to one of the men.) “Because these are big shoes, and he has big feet.”

If you prefer an activity that’s a bit more serious yet easy to manage, look at my Whose Is It_handout. This is a simple matching game. Students match picture cards to photos of people, identifying which objects belong to whom. For online instructors, you may prefer the layout of the photos in this version: Whose Is It_handout_online instruction. (It’s in Word, so you can easily add your own photos.)