Command drills with prepositions
Command drills
Command drills are a great way to teach many language points. The language activity described in this lesson plan has as an objective to teach students prepositional phrases through commands and write a paragraph using these prepositional phrases.
The activity
Here is the activity procedure:
- Introduces prepositions and explain their meaning.
- Write the prepositions on the board.
- Call out a command for students to perform. For example:
Command Action under the chair students drop under their chair on top of the table they sit on top of the table next to the door they stand next to the door around the desk they wrap their arms around their desk in front of the window they stand in front of the window on the left of the board they stand on the left of the board in your bag they put their hands in their school bag
You can involve students to take turns calling out the commands for the rest of the class to perform.
Writing a description
After performing enough actions to practice prepositions, ask students to write a paragraph describing their living room or their bedroom. They can use the following phrases:
- in the corner, …
- next to the bed, …
- on the wall, …
- on top of the table, …
- in the middle of the room, …
- under the window,
- on the left of the door etc.
When the students are finished describing their rooms they exchange their paragraphs for peer editing. Give them enough time to proof read it. Then they take turn reading them. Later, students vote for the best description.
Follow up
Split students into groups of four and ask them to prepare prepositional phrases to use as commands for other groups to perform.
advantages of this lesson plan:
- It’s a fun activity.
- Students learn while playing.
- They use language to perform things.