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:

1. in the corner, …
2. next to the bed, …
3. on the wall, …
4. on top of the table, …
5. in the middle of the room, …
6. under the window,
7. 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.