Prepositions

Every month or two, we have a staff meeting, in which two teachers are asked to give a short presentation of techniques and ideas they have used in the classroom. Until recently, I'd managed to avoid being called up, but my time came as I had known it inevitably would.

Rest assured, it was a magnificent presentation. Even my notoriously-hard-to-please boss told me afterwards that it was, and I quote, "quite impressive."

Because you are all, I'm sure, quite distraught at having missed out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I give you now the handout I prepared, that you may have at least a glimpse of my awesomeness.

Beyond the Textbook:
Five Fun and Simple Things to do with Prepositions

1. Listening: Spatial Movement:

One by one, call the students to the front of the class, with specific instructions for each one on where to stand:
- Rachel, come stand in front of me.
- Leo, stand beside Rachel.
- Rocky, stand behind Leo.
- Emily, stand between Leo and Rocky.

By repositioning yourself, you also force the students to move as well- by turning around, for example, the student who was previously in front of you is now behind you all of a sudden, and must reorient herself accordingly.

2. Writing: The Basket Game

Divide the class into two teams. Have one student from each team come up to the whiteboard; give them each a marker.

Put your teaching basket on an empty desk at the front of the classroom. Establish what constitutes in front of the basket, beside the basket, and so on.

Take an object- a pen, a die, an eraser- from the basket, and place it somewhere on the desk. The first student to write down the correct preposition gets a point for his or her team. Depending on the level of the students, you can either have them write just the preposition (“in front of”) or a full sentence (“The eraser is in front of the basket.”).

3. Questions: The Hide and Seek Game

Have one student wait in the hallway. Choose a small object and hide it somewhere in the classroom- in a schoolbag, behind the door, under a desk, etc. Once the student is brought back into the class, he or she must find the object by asking yes/no questions:

-Is it under something?
-Is it next to the wall?
-Is it in something?

4. Speaking practice: The drawing game

Bring some simple drawings to class, or if time permits, give your students 3-5 minutes to make their own basic line drawings. Collect the drawings, then invite two students up to the whiteboard.

Show the class (but not the students at the whiteboard) one of the drawings. They must now describe it in detail so the students at the front are able to draw it:

-There’s a Christmas tree.
-Under the Christmas tree is a cat.
-The cat is on a pillow.
-The pillow is next to a present.

This is also a good activity to introduce new vocabulary such as “to the left of,” or “in the middle of.”

5. Assessment: Drawing test.

This is similar to the drawing game, but rather than having students come to the whiteboard to make pictures, each student is given a sheet of paper at their desk, and the teacher then tells them what to draw. I try to keep it simple by using geometric shapes rather than people or animals, as otherwise the students become distracted by adding details. This is also a particularly easy test to mark, as each paper can be checked in a matter of seconds.

-Draw a circle in the middle of the page.
-Draw a triangle above the circle.
-Draw a square beside the triangle, and a small circle in the square.