Placing prepositions

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello, everyone, my name's Emma, and welcome to today's lesson. I'm looking forward to today's session, and I hope you are too. I can't wait to get started. But before we do, just a quick reminder, we here at Oak are here to support any approaches that you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know this lesson is going out to so many different children and families. So if you're not sure or have any questions, please do contact your child's school or usual speech and language therapy team. In today's session, we're focusing on preposition words. We're going to be thinking about how we can help you to develop your use and understanding of preposition or position words. And we're going to have lots of activities where we're demonstrating our use and understanding of prepositions. Throughout all of the activities, I'm going to be sharing some hints and tips for adults so that they can help you with your use of language. So for today's session, you'll need a camera, some toys, a chair, a hula hoop if you have one, and a box. Don't worry if you don't have these specific items. If you have anything around the house that could be used as an obstacle course, that would be great. Adults, you'll need some writing equipment and the downloadable resource that's available on the Oak website with this lesson. So before we begin, find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the lesson. Turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have running on your device. And then when you're ready and seated comfortably, let's begin. Okay, let's start by doing some talking and thinking about prepositions and positions. As we know, children learn words by hearing them lots of times in lots of different contexts. Hearing them being used by adults helps children to develop an understanding of words, and they need to understand them before they can use them. We learned in lesson eight that adjectives are describing words. Prepositions are also a type of describing word. They tell us where something is, its position, or maybe the direction that it might be moving in. Prepositions link closely to concepts that we covered in module three, understanding language. It might be helpful to go back to module three to consolidate your child's understanding of concepts before we work on using prepositions. There are three early prepositions that children learn to use and understand, most often through their play. These are in, on, and under. So using those early prepositions, we're going to have an obstacle course. This game is best played outside. You and your adult are going to need a hoop, a box, a chair, or anything else that you've got around the house that you could use in an obstacle course. Once you set your obstacle course up, you're going to practise moving your body in, on, and under. Adults support your child by modelling the preposition and providing visual reinforcement if they need it. You can pause on the previous slide and use the symbols included there if you like. Make sure that you take lots of pictures during this game. We want to create a picture book of you being in, on, and under. When you've completed your obstacle course and taken lots and lots of pictures, come back to the video and press play to continue the lesson. When adults model language through a child's play and everyday activities, they're much more likely to develop a strong understanding of it, and therefore be able to use it. We as adults can add prepositions into our language when we're describing where an object is that a child is playing with, or looking at. For example, if a child is playing with their car and says, my car, you could model and expand that by saying, yes, your car is behind the box, and really use your voice to emphasise that new word that you're using. When we're targeting prepositions, as with any type of word learning that we've discussed over the last couple of lessons, we need to know what the child knows, understands, and uses, and then highlight the ones that they don't. A child might hear prepositions being used in their every day, lots and lots. And that's great. But if a child is experiencing difficulties learning to use prepositions themselves, it can be really helpful to focus on just one at a time. We can use everyday situations to facilitate teaching these specific prepositions one at a time. And we can also create lots of multi-sensory activities that bring that preposition to life. The more fun and motivating an activity, the more likely that language is to stick. As we just did in the first activity, taking pictures of our child demonstrating prepositions will be a fantastic resource to then look back on and talk about. And again, reinforce the use and understanding of that particular vocabulary. We need to be sure as well that the child can use prepositions in different situations, and make sure that they can generalise their understanding across different contexts. So here are a few more prepositions and position words that our children need to be able to understand and use. Pause the video here to gather up some of your toys. So now you've got your toys ready. We're going to have a bit of a practise with the preposition word behind. But first, let's look at some pictures. What is behind the clouds? That's right, the sun is behind the clouds, well done. Pause the video here to put some of your toys behind things. Adults, while the child is doing this, take some pictures. This will be great to add to our preposition book. Things like concept walks are fantastic. You can pick your preposition, and you can set your child the task to point to all the things that are behind. You can play games like I spy, which again, target that preposition, and also find stories that might bring it to life. Games like hide and seek are also really good for preposition words, because you can hide toys in those specific places or in those positions. And you can also create obstacle courses, like we did at the beginning of this lesson. So pause the video here to pick one more activity for behind to have a go at home. You can pause the video on the previous slide to remind yourself of what they are, or you can have a look in the downloadable resource. Come back to the video and press play when you're ready to continue. So, as we know, what we want to create for our children is a language rich environment where they're accessing words in fun-filled natural ways. Adults need to be providing strong models for language, and reinforcing their words with multi-sensory activities, providing lots of visuals and symbols to reinforce any words that have been used. All of these really help words stick. We can create as many opportunities as possible for talking and describing so that our children is having continuous fun with words. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson. But a really big well done, and all the fantastic using and understanding of preposition words that you've done today. If you'd like, you could ask your parent or carer to share some of the pictures that you've been taking, showing prepositions with your teacher at school. You could also ask your parent or carer to share these with @OakNational on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. So I can see your fantastic progress as well. Well, all that's left for me to say is thank you, but take care and enjoy the rest of your learning. Bye-bye.

Placing prepositions

Placing prepositions

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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