Prepositions of location lesson plan

Stand-alone lesson ESL kids lesson plan

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Prepositions of location

In this lesson students practice saying where things are using some simple prepositions of location. Students practice explaining where things are in the classroom, do a listening activity and read a funny story.

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Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives:
– Saying where things are using prepositions.
– Using singular and plural forms.
Structures: “Where is/are …?”, “Is it …?, “Are they …?”, “It is …”, “They are …”.
Target vocabulary: on, under, in, behind, next to, in front of, between.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Worksheet 1 for “Where are my things?” song
Worksheet 2 for “Where are my things?” song
Where is it? worksheet
Reader worksheet
Where are my things? song poster

Songs:

Where are my things?

Readers:

Silly Willy goes shopping

Additional materials:

Where things are vocab crossword
Where things are vocab word search
Where is it? worksheet

Supplies:

[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] pencils
small toy animal with a box to keep it in
board with marker / chalk
device to play the song on

Notes:

The song and worksheets in this lesson are great for active listening exercises!

Lesson procedure:

Warm up and maintenance:

The beginning of your lesson is extremely important: this is where you set the tone of your lesson and get everyone in the right frame of mind for learning English. It is also an opportunity to check homework and review previous lessons.

Click for warm up suggestions for the start of your lessons

Print this warm up and maintenance section

These activities can be done in the following order at the start of your lesson:

1. Greetings and name tags
Greet the students by name as they enter the classroom and gesture for them to sit down. Before class prepare some blank name tags (stickers or pin-on tags). Give these out and have everyone write their names and put their tags on. If you use pin-on tags, you can keep and give out every class.

2. Homework check
Check each student’s homework set in the last lesson. Ask each student some questions about their homework worksheet (e.g. “what [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is it?”), give lots of praise, and then put some kind of mark on the homework sheet (e.g. a sticker, a stamp or draw a smiley face). Finally, tell your students to put their homework back into their bags.

3. Review past lessons
Reviewing past lessons is very important – students need constant practice of new vocab, structures, songs, games and so on. Always review parts of your last lesson as well as some parts from other previous lessons. You can spend 5-10 minutes reviewing – it’s fine to recycle games and activities from your past lessons to review as kids enjoy playing familiar games (although be careful not to play a game to death!). See the section “Other ideas to include in your warm” below for ideas.

Note:

You can also include review activities in the main body of your lesson. Kids can have short attention spans so it’s good to be able to pull out lots of activities during different stages of the lesson.

Other ideas to include in your warm up:

Ball pass questions
This is good to review questions from previous lessons. Get everybody standing in a circle.

Round 1:
Take a ball and hold it and say, “My name is (you name)”. Then throw the ball to one student and say, “What’s your name?”. Students throw the ball around randomly, saying their names and asking for names.

Round 2:
This time ask a review question, e.g. “How many tables are there?”. Then throw the ball to a student who should answer, “There are (6) tables”. Help if necessary. Then that student throws the ball to another student and asks a “How many …?” question. Continue so everyone has a go. You can have multiple rounds with different topic questions.

Play “Spin the bottle”
Sit students in a circle with a bottle in the middle. Teacher spins the bottle. When it stops spinning the student it is pointing to has to answer a question. If the answer is correct then that student can spin the bottle. This is a good class warm up activity (e.g. How are you? What’s your [hide_on_uk]favorite[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]favourite[/hide_on_us] food? How’s the weather today?, etc.

Play “Vocabulary basketball”
This is a fun game which reviews vocabulary from previous lessons. You will need a basket (a trash can) and 2 balls (or 2 pieces of A4 paper scrunched up into balls).

Form 2 teams and line them up so that two players from each team are facing the front with the basket in front of them. Let both players throw their ball – if they get their ball into the basket they can try and win a point by giving the correct answer to a question the teacher asks. This can be an actual question (e.g. What are you wearing?) or a flashcard (What’s this?). Then they go to the back of the line. At the end, the team with the most points is the winner!

Play “What’s missing?”
This is a fun review memory game – students will have to try to remember review objects from previous lessons (e.g. classroom stationery). Lay the objects out on a table for all to see. Allow the students a minute to memorize the positions of the objects. Remove an object and hold it behind your back. Say, “Open your eyes!” – the first student who can shout out the missing object wins a point for his/her team. Play for all the objects.

Finally, calculate which team has won the most points and give them a round of applause.

Play “Quiz game show”
This is a fun quiz game, like a simple version of a TV game show. Draw some circles on the board and randomly write numbers 1, 2 or 3 in each circle. These will be points.

Put students into teams. Then ask the first team to choose a number – 1 is an easy question (e.g. “Do you like bananas?”) and 3 is a difficult question (e.g. point at a clock and ask, “What time is it?”). 2 will be in between in terms of difficulty. When the question has been answered correctly, erase that number circle. Play until all the number circles are gone – the team with the most points is the winner!

Read a classroom reader again
As you progress through the lessons you will start to build up a catalog of classroom readers (see our Readers download page at https://www.eslkidstuff.com). Kids love going back to old stories and reading through them again. Invite a student to pick a classroom reader and read through it as a class. Make the story as interactive as possible by asking questions (e.g. what [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us] there are, the names of different objects, etc.) and getting students to speculate what is going to happen next in the story.

Talk about the weather (do after you have taught the weather lesson plan).

Prepare a weather board. Before the first class prepare a piece of cardboard and cover it with felt – you are going to pin this to the wall. If you can, try and get blue felt (to represent the sky). Write at the top in large letters, “How’s the weather today?”. Below that write “Today it’s”. Cut out weather pictures (such as our weather flashcards) and stick some velcro on the back. Arrange the weather pictures around the edge of the board and then put the board on the wall of your classroom. You can now use this weather board at the beginning of every lesson.
Ask about the weather. Ask, “How’s the weather today?” and have students put up their hands. Allow one weather condition per student (e.g. “It’s rainy”) and have each student come up and put a weather picture on the weather board.
Introduce more weather vocabulary. Depending on weather conditions, you can introduce more weather words (with pictures … you can get students to draw them), such as:

stormy
misty
showery

freezing
humid
frosty

icy
drizzly

New learning and practice:

1. Teach the prepositions vocabulary
For this you’ll need a box and a small toy animal (I use a koala). Before class, put the koala inside the box. In class, sit your students down and take out the box. Rattle the box and have your students rattle the box and try to guess what is inside. Take out the toy and introduce it to the class. Also elicit the word “box”.

Sit the toy on the box and ask, “Where is it?”. Elicit/Teach the preposition “on” and then “It’s on the box”. Do the same for the rest of the prepositions (on, under, in, behind, next to, in front of, between).

2. Practice the prepositions
Put students in pairs and give each pair a box and toy – or anything which can be used to practice the prepositions (e.g. a pencil and pencil case). Have each pair ask and answer questions using the prepositions.

3. Play “Where Is / Where are”
Take out a pen and elicit the word. Have everyone close their eyes. Hide the pen somewhere in the classroom (e.g. inside a book). Tell everyone to open their eyes and ask them, “Where is the pen?”. Have each student guess using the structure, “Is it (under) the (chair)?”.

When the pen is finally found take out a pair of shoes (can be a dolls pair). Elicit / Teach, “They’re shoes” and show the contrast between “It‘s” and “They‘re“.

Again, have your students close their eyes as you hide the shoes. Students try and guess their location by asking questions such as, “Are they (behind) the (desk)?”.

Now put students in pairs and have each pair hide objects and ask where things are using the prepositions and structures.

4. Play the “Where are my things?” song with listening worksheet
Give everyone a worksheet (Worksheet 1 for “Where are my things?” song). Elicit the items on the worksheet. Tell the students to listen to the song and draw the pen and shoes in the correct location on the worksheet. Play the song twice to give everyone a good chance of getting the answer right.

If everyone enjoyed the song you can play it again and sing along. Put the song poster on the board to use as you all sing along.

Lyrics for “Where are my things?”

It’s time to go to school but where are my things?

Verse 1:
Where are my things? Where are my things?
Where are my things? Where can they be?

Where is my pen? Where is my pen?

Is it on the table?
No!
Is it under the desk?
No!
Is it in the drawer?
No!
Where is it?
It’s behind the curtains!

Verse 2:
Where are my things? Where are my things?
Where are my things? Where can they be?

Where are my shoes? Where are my shoes?

Are they next to the TV?
No!
Are they in front of the door?
No!
Are they between the sofa and the chair?
No!
Where are they?
They’re on your feet!

Gestures for “Where are my things?”

There are no specific gestures for this song. The song can be used with our worksheet for listening practice – students listen to the song and draw the answers on the worksheet (see point 5).

Where are my things? song active listening

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
<br /> [/hide_on_uk]

[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
<br /> [/hide_on_us]

5. Do the prepositions listening worksheet
Give everyone a worksheet (Worksheet 2 for “Where are my things?” song). This time the teacher is going to make sentences and the students have to listen and draw the objects in the right places.

6. Read classroom reader “Silly Willy goes shopping”
This classroom readers follows the same objectives of this lesson and gives some fun practice of using prepositions of location – it’s a funny interactive story. Before class, download and print off the reader “Silly Willy goes shopping”. As you go through each page, point to the pictures and elicit each room of the house and the different objects in each room. Then get everyone to try and guess where the character is going to put the different objects (using prepositions), for example:

Teacher: Where is Silly Willy? (pointing at the picture on page 3)
Students: In the kitchen!
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! And what is this (and this and this)?
Students: A washing machine, an oven and a fridge.
Teacher: Right! Good job! And what is Silly Willy holding?
Students: Cheese!
Teacher: Yes, cheese! (reading from the story) … “Where do you think he will put the cheese?”.
Students: In the fridge!
Teacher: Ok, Let’s check … (turns to page 4 – reading) … “In the washing machine! Silly, Silly Willy!”

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions (e.g. the different objects) and try to get everyone predicting where the objects will be put.

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and read through the story one more time (without stopping for questions, etc.) as students complete the sentences. Then go through the answers as a class.

Alternatively, watch our video version of the reader (Internet connection required).

7. Play “Prepositions pictionary”
For smaller classes you can play this on the board – larger classes can use paper to play in groups. Start by modeling the activity. Bring a student up to the class. Say, “Draw a cat on a car”. The student has to draw the picture. Then get the student who drew the picture to say a new sentence and another student to draw the picture.

Keep playing so that everyone has a chance to draw and say a sentence.

Wrap up:

Assign homework: “Where is it?” worksheet

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Print this wrap up section

1. Assign homework
Each week give out a homework worksheet for your students to take home. Hold up the homework worksheet and model how to do it. Give out the worksheets and say, “Put your homework in your bags”.

2. Do “Quick check”
Time to leave the class. Make sure everything is put away and the students have gathered their belongings. Have them line up at the door and place yourself between the door and the students. For each student check one new word or phrase, for example:

hold up an object or flashcard (such as an item of clothing) and ask, “What’s this?”
ask a question from the lesson (e.g. “Where do you live?”, “Do you like bananas?”, “Can you play chess?”, etc.)

When they give you the correct answer say goodbye and let them leave. If their answer is wrong, have them go back to the end of the line – they will have to try again once they reach the front!