Linsey Westerman

Microteach #1

September 23, 2003

I.                     Unit:  The Eight Parts of Speech

II.                  Topic:  Understanding Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

III.                Summative Objective:  Students will be able to identify prepositions and use them in their own writing.

IV.               Materials: 

a.       Power Point Presentation

b.       Notes on Presentation

c.       Copies of both common prepositions and preposition practice handouts for each student. 

V.                  Procedures:  Direct Instruction

Anticipatory Set  (2-3 minutes)

First ask the students to take all material off of their desks.  Then ask them instead to place everything on top of their desks.  Next say to put everything either beside or under their desks.  (The point is to direct the students using prepositions.)  Write on the board the commands that were given to the students at the start of the class and explain that prepositions are words that are often used to indicate a direction, location or command, (as seen in instructions of where to place materials.)

Learning Outcomes (Formative Objectives) (1 min)

Students will be able to:

1.       Define prepositions and prepositional phrases.

2.       Identify prepositions and prepositional phrases within sentences.

3.       Create their own prepositional phrases.

Input / Model (8-10 min)

Display the PowerPoint and review the first four parts of speech previously discussed by class.  This brings the class to number five—

prepositions.  Go through each slide on the PowerPoint explaining each, discussing examples, and checking for students’ understanding. 

1.       Defining Prepositions

A preposition is a word that comes before a noun or other nominal.  One way to remember this is by breaking the word apart pre-position, and recognizing that pre = before.  Prepositions often indicate a direction or a location in space, for example, the words used to describe where to place materials at the beginning of class, (above, below, beside, under.)  Prepositions are also used to modify noun phrases such as “against the wall,” where the noun phrase, “the wall” is modified by the preposition “against.”  To check for understanding, have the students pick out the preposition in three prepositional phrases written on the board, such as, before the game and throughout the night.  This will then lead the discussion to prepositional phrases.

2.       Prepositional Phrases

The preposition and the nominal, (a.k.a. object or noun,) together create a prepositional phrase.  Instruct students to take note of the facts that a prepositional phrase always involves a noun, NOT a verb, and a prepositional phrase includes three things:  the preposition, the object of the preposition, and any modifiers related to the preposition or the object. 

3.       Examples

Discuss the examples of prepositional phrases on the power point.  Point out the different parts of speech that are found in a prepositional phrase. 

Check for understanding / Guided Practice (4-5 mins)

Pass out prepositional practice worksheet containing five sentences and have students complete them as directed and then discuss their answers in class. 

Ask students to create sentences for the last pictures in the PowerPoint.  Give an example of your own created sentence for the first one. (Example:  The peas in the pod are rowing down the river.)  Write it on the board and ask students to pick out the prepositions and prepositional phrases within the sentence.  Then ask students to volunteer their own sentence, write it on the board and point out the prepositional phrase that the student used.

Independent Practice

Have the students find a paragraph from an article in the newspaper/ a magazine, and underline all of the prepositional phrases. 

Also have them describe a room in their house using at least five prepositional phrases.

Closure (1 min)

Tomorrow, at the beginning of class, students will discuss their newspaper paragraphs and give some examples of prepositional phrases they found.  Students will also hand in descriptions of rooms and try to guess whose room is being described when a few are read to the class.