Prepositions are very slippery little things to define formally. 
However, your students have been using prepositional phrases in their
speech with amazing accuracy for many years now.  So they know what
prep. phrases are; they just don't know that they know it.

Here's how I approach it:  I write the following sentence on the board:

The book is ________ the table.

I then ask students to fill in the blank.  Several options come forth,
as you might imagine.  This allows me to say a few words about the
role of prepositions in this sentence:  without one, the reader has no
idea how "the table" relates to "the book."  So that's what
prepositions do:  they show how one noun phrase relates to another.

Next, we examine a passage as follows:  I read a sentence and then ask
the students to show how many prep. phrases they see in it by holding
up the correct number of fingers.  Then we go through and identify
each prep. and its object (assuming there are any).  After a few
sample sentences, most students get the hang of it.  You can then take
it anywhere you would like.

Attempts to teach prepositions without tying that knowledge back to
what students already know about English is ineffective.  I attended a
session last year at NCTE where the presenters proudly demonstrated
that students could memorize a list of alphabetized prepositions by
singing them to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel.  Give me a break . .
. .

John



On 5/9/05, Jan Kammert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >   I changed direction and
> > started with grammar  -- nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and then
> > prepositions (4 pages).  This is what the book says:  "Prepositions
> > help a reader or listener understand the relationship of one word to
> > another.  A preposition relates a noun or pronoun to another word in
> > the sentence."
> > Two of the four pages on prepositions talk about distinguishing between
> > prepositions and adverbs.
> >
> Prepositions are hard for my 8th graders.  I have not seen a definition
> that's understandable.  Does anyone have an easy definition?
> Jan
> 
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