::A Geek in Korea::

I’m an old pro at doing the “in, on, under” lesson. I’ve got a few different variations on my plan, and I just keep using them over and over. My basic readers were working out how to make sentences with two items in relation to each other using these three prepositions. You have to explain how “The box is on the chair” is different than “The chair is on the box” to them multiple times.

I had used my teaching box, a chair, and a CD player as my examples. We put the box on the floor under the chair. Then I put the CD in the box. Then I took out the CD and put it in the radio. Then I took the CD player and put it on the chair. Then I’d ask them where each of the items was. For whatever reason, “in” was giving them a hard time. It’s not a super exciting lesson, and students always are trying to grab the items and move them around if you aren’t careful.

I decided I wanted to shake things up a little. I grabbed a shipping box from a spare room in the school and brought it into the class. One student crawled inside and said, “I am in the box!” without any prompting!

Of course, all the students wanted to get in the box. One student then flipped the box over. “I am under the box!”

Of course, trying to get the students to sit down after I introduced a box was tough, so I eventually I had to return the box back to the extra room.

I immediatly gave a quiz after the activity, and the students could remember the different locations much better after seeing the large box they could get in or sit under. Will they remember it tomorrow? Maybe not. The students really enjoyed the activity. I was lucky no one got hurt. I don’t think I’d do it again.