Have Contractions Worksheet

Third graders meet have contractions everywhere they read and almost never notice the apostrophe doing the work. This Have Contractions Worksheet puts eight of them in front of students on purpose: I’ve, We’ve, They’ve, You’ve, should’ve, would’ve, could’ve and must’ve. The apostrophe in each one stands in for the missing letters of have, and that is the punctuation point the sheet is built to teach. Students who can hear a contraction but cannot write one usually place the apostrophe by guesswork, so the practice here is deliberately generative rather than multiple choice.

The printable works in two moves. In the first section, five sentences each hide exactly one pair of words that can join, and students write the contraction on the line beside the sentence. In the second section, three sentences are rewritten in full with the contraction in place, so students have to keep the rest of the sentence intact while they make the change. There is no word bank, which is a deliberate difference from the older version of this activity: a bank makes the answer a matching problem, and it made several of the old items accept more than one word. A complete answer key is included. This 3rd grade punctuation worksheet fits a grammar block, a small group review, or homework after an apostrophe lesson, and the Have Contractions Worksheet prints cleanly in black and white when color is not available.

What’s Included

• Five sentences that each hide exactly one contraction to write
• Three full sentence rewrites using a contraction in place of two words
• Coverage of all eight have contractions across the two sections
• An original watercolor illustration tied to a sentence on the page
• A complete answer key
• A print-ready PDF sized for standard letter paper

Three Reasons This Helps Kids

• Writing the contraction instead of choosing it forces students to decide where the apostrophe goes, which is the actual skill.
• The modal forms should’ve, would’ve, could’ve and must’ve are the ones students later misspell as “should of,” so meeting them early heads off the habit.
• The full sentence rewrites make students hold spelling, spacing and punctuation together rather than one at a time.

Teacher and Parent Ideas

• Ask students to say aloud which letters the apostrophe replaced in each answer.
• Have students hunt for have contractions in a book they are already reading and add them to a class chart.
• Turn the second section around: give the contraction and ask for the two words it stands for.
• Pair the sheet with a quick reminder that “should of” is never correct, however it sounds.

Related Resources

• Not Contractions Worksheet
• Is Contractions Worksheet
• Possession & Contraction Apostrophe Worksheet
• Don’t Song