In, On, Under, Over, In Front, Behind

My 5th graders are studying prepositions of location and to help them remember the meanings and to liven up class a bit, we sang the Preposition Song. Guys, this is a creepy song. It's sung in this weird robotic voice with no proper tonal inflection and the video starts and ends with what is suppose to be the giggle of happy children learning English but sounds to me like the maniacal giggles of children being terrorized by a creepy singing robot clown. Despite how disturbing I personally find it though, it's a great song for teaching prepositions. It super simple (the lyrics consist of six basic prepositions - in, on, under, over, in front, behind) and there are hand motions to go with each of the prepositions.

First I taught the kids the hand motions and then we the song four or five times, until my brain was bleeding from the those creepy giggles and the kids were reasonable comfortable with the hand motions. They really liked when the song got too fast for them to keep up and they got to wave their hands about in the air. They really really liked when the song got to fast for me to keep up and I threw my hands in the air dramatically. After we sang, I showed the students some pictures and had them write sentences describing the situations. The rabbit is in the box, the pig is on the table - that sort of thing. As I walked around the classroom, I watched at least half my kids start to mouth the words to the song while doing the hand motions until they reached the right preposition.

I watched the look of comprehension that dawned on their faces as they realized that, hey, they could do this and remembered that, right, this is why I love teaching.