Their, There, and They're

Choose correctly between three words that sound the same but mean different things.

'Their', 'there', and 'they're' are homophones: they sound exactly alike but have different meanings and spellings. 'Their' shows that something belongs to a group: their bikes. 'There' points to a place, and it contains the word 'here', which is also a place: over there. 'There' also starts sentences like 'There is a cat. ' 'They're' is a contraction, a short way to write 'they are'.

The apostrophe stands for the missing letter a. Test it: 'They're going to park their bikes over there. ' Replace 'they're' with 'they are' and it still makes sense. 'Their bikes' shows ownership. 'Over there' is a place.

• 1their = belongs to them.
• 2there = a place (it hides the word 'here').
• 3they're = they are; test it by expanding it.