Prepositional Phrases and Paper Planes

Ok...just I finished teaching a new topic from Common Core...prepositions! 

Each year I have taught prepositions since this part of speech seems to always be one that comes up as we examine sentences during the year, but, since they are not one that had been required for my students to know and understand, I have always pushed them until later in the school year. 

But this year, prepositions are now a part of speech we MUST know...therefore, I kind of felt like my instruction needed to be a wee bit stronger on this topic.  So I made my way over to TeachersPayTeachers to see what others had already come up with...and I found the perfect item for my boy heavy writing class!

Smart Chick Teaching Resources has created the cutest activity to help students explore prepositions...

(click on the picture above to go to TeachersPayTeachers to take a closer look!)  It is a simple concept...students build a paper airplane and fly it.  Then they must write a sentence using a prepositional phrase about where the airplane lands.

I added a step.  We took pictures of where our airplanes landed.  I got out the 6 iPod Touches I have and each student worked in pairs to record the flights of their airplane through photos and prepositons.  And we got down to business...

Some of us got creative too...

Then off to the computer lab we went.  We typed them up our sentence, added the pictures we took, and created little books!  We had lots of fun, integrated technology, and learned a new part of speech...all in one activity!  Whoo hoo!