How to Teach Prepositional Phrases in a Way That’s Actually Fun for Your Students: Paper Airplane Showdown
I am definitely in favor of making my lessons more interesting, especially when it comes to usually intangible things like grammar or sentence structure. I doubt I’m the only teacher to ever do this, but I came up with a fun way to practice prepositional phrases using paper airplanes! My kids went CRAZY for it, and they even learned a thing or two! I wanted other teachers to have this experience with their students, so I made this ready-to-go lesson so you can get started right away with this super engaging lesson.
Keep reading to learn about this activity!
What is Paper Airplane Showdown?
This is SUCH a fun activity to do with your students. After going through the lesson and discussing what prepositional phrases are, your students get to practice. Each student will create their own paper airplane, then throw the airplane across the room. When the students retrieve their airplane, they will take note of where it landed; for example, “On the chair” or “Below the desk”. They will write down the prepositional phrase of where it landed onto the airplane, then repeat!
Your students will love this game and will want to play it over and over again!
What are the benefits?
✈️Whole body learning
This is a practice that will keep your students interested in the lesson (and learning), as they are participating physically, mentally, and emotionally. Hence, the “whole body”.
✈️Strengthen students’ vocabulary and writing skills
Learning sentence structure will help your students develop the skills necessary to become independent (thus more confident) writers. The lesson included is a good introduction to prepositional phrases, and the activity is one they’ll never forget!
✈️Easy assessments
This lesson comes with two quick assessments - an exit ticket and a small quiz to go over what was taught within the lesson. It’s a Google Form, so once you get your copy you can change it up and assign point values as needed.
✈️Ready-to-Go
This resource has everything you need to get started (minus the tangible objects, of course), from teacher directions, materials needed, the lesson slides, and so on. Quickly review it to understand what to do, add a video about prepositions if desired, and go!
✈️Editable
Even though it IS ready-to-go, I feel as if it needed to be editable, just in case you wanted to add or change the information that I typed into the slides for you. This way, you can scaffold up or down, keeping in mind the levels of your students.
What’s included?
7 editable slides (each slide that students will see can be edited, plus one blank one in case you need it)
1 title slide
1 slide with fonts to use
1 "materials needed" slide
1 "teacher directions" slide
1 "optional assessments" slide with links to an exit ticket and a quick assessment
3 slides discussing prepositions and prepositional phrases
1 side introducing the activity
1 brainstorming slide
1 student directions slide
