#35: How I Teach…100+ Prepositions by Their Purposes and Within Categories

This episode of 10 Minute Grammar, I am revisiting prepositions in my How I Teach Series.  I know you will find it helpful while teaching prepositions to your studens!

In this episode, I delve into the concept of a lengthy, thorough, and useful prepositions list for students. Prepositions lists usually consist of a jingle, rhyme, or chant that involves memorizing 20-30 prepositions. When students are taught prepositions lists via this method, they seldom actually know what prepositions are, why they should learn them, what they will do with them once they are learned, and how to write with them.

Enter teaching prepositions by their purpose and within categories! Students can learn 100, 120, 150, or more prepositions rather quickly with this approach.

Here is the run-down on the method of preposition teaching that you will learn in today’s broadcast (and via any of my preposition products https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Language-Arts-Lady-With-Donna-Reish/Search:prepositions):

• Prepositions show position (first thing I teach students)
• There are over 200 total prepositions (including those made of other words and those that are also other parts of speech, like up and before, )
• We learn prepositions because they are the first words in the most common phrase found in sentences: the prepositional phrase.
• When teaching prepositions, teach them through the purpose—using check sentences: The plane flew _____ the clouds, etc.
• These check sentences are the beginning of teaching prepositional phrases (as opposed to just learning a list of prepositions then later learning what they do)
• Once students learn a couple dozen prepositions through a check sentence, apply different categories of prepositions to those check sentences:
  • The plane flew ____ the clouds with prepositions that begin with A
  • The plane flew ____ the clouds with prepositions that begin with other vowels
  • The plane flew _____ the clouds with prepositions that begin with B
  • The plane flew _____ the clouds with prepositions that are made of up compound words
  • The plane flew _____ the clouds with prepositions that are multi-word
  • The plane flew _____ the clouds with prepositions that are opposites
  • The plane flew ______ the clouds with prepositions that are synonyms
• After students have a few dozen or more spatial prepositions memorized, move into time prepositions: The pilot laughed ______ the meal (during, after, before, in the middle of, etc.)

It’s all here in this week’s HIT!!! And….you get the full table of contents showing the order I teach, some worksheet pages showing how I lay out the lessons, a freebie at my store with all prepositions listed and some category cards for students to have at their fingertips, and more!

My sixty students (online and live) learn 100 prepositions using this method—and yours can too!

Of course, just like every lesson in my one-month downloadable books and my one-semester Meaningful Composition books, this one also has the invaluable sample lessons and lists.

And for your convenience, How I Teach…. is available as a podcast (follow along in your TN sheets for that week) and a YouTube video (with Power Point containing the same as the TN)! 

Note: This lesson came from Christmas Preposition Pack, a 100-page downloadable book filled with the types of lessons described in this broadcast—and seventeen assignments for your students!

Find everything you need here!

Weekly broadcast episodes with Teacher’s Notebook downloads (and links to listen or watch!) at the Language Arts Lady blog

Master (continually updated) Teacher’s Notebook downloadable booklet

Free writing books and videos of me teaching your students for you for a couple of weeks!

All of my digital books

How I Teach YouTube Channel

How I Teach Podcast