Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases: Lesson plans and teaching resources

Finding Prepositional Phrases
Students find the prepositional phrases in the sentences given.

Kinds (Function) of Prepositional Phrase Recognition Practice
An explanation, 10 practice sentences, and answers.

Filling in the Blanks: Using Modifiers to Provide Detail
Students develop voice and style by adding details to their writing.

Phrase/Clause Recognition Practice
An explanation of the difference, examples, and 15 practice items. Answers available.

Playing with Prepositions through Poetry
Students play with words as they explore how prepositions work in Ruth Heller's picture book Behind the Mask . They first explore the use of language in the text and identify how prepositions are used. They then read and identify prepositions used in a poem. Finally, students compose their own original prepositional poems, which they publish in a multimodal format modeled on Heller's text.

Preposition Dance
This downloadable YouTube video (1:43) will make a good reinforcing activity. Students can perform it in the classroom.

Preposition Power
This slide presentation is a good review activity for independent work by individual students or small groups.

The Preposition Song
Students memorize a list of prepositions sung to "Yankee Doodle."

Prepositional Phrase Recognition Practice
This page offers a definition, examples, a list of prepositions, and 10 sentences for students to practice with. Students can check their responses by clicking on "answers."

Prepositions
A collection of teacher-tested activities for teaching prepositions to elementary students.

Prepositions
Third graders read Find the Puppy by Felicity Brooks and identify the prepositions. After practicing prepositions by completing worksheets (not included), students write their own preposition books.

Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins
Four activities to develop literacy skills, including one that helps students learn prepositions. Print this card and send it home with students to work on with parents.

Special Places to Love
Students write a paragraph about a special place they remember, then search for prepositional phrases in their rough draft. After a read-aloud of All the Places to Love , students talk about Patricia MacLachlan's use of prepositional phrases to give her sentences flow. Students revise their special place paragraphs to use meaningful prepositional phrases that share memorable details.

Terminal Prepositions
This downloadable YouTube video (5:01)explores the origin of that "Don't end a sentence with a preposition" usage rule (or "cherished superstition"). Includes advertising at the end.

Tricky Prepositions
This high-resolution graphic will make a good poster for your classroom. It illustrates "into" vs. "in to," "ask for" vs. "ask to," "think of" vs. "think about," "heard of" vs. "heard about," and "among" vs. "between."

Wild Weather Sentences
Students create a sentence about weather using an online sentence generator (included). After manipulating and illustrating the sentence, they write a longer story or description using the sentence as inspiration. Emphasis is on learning to move adverbs and prepositional phrases around in sentences to craft more fluent and more interesting writing.

Writing Prepositional Phrases
In this worksheet students add prepositional phrases to sentences. One page, designed for 4th grade. Adobe Reader required.