PREPOSITION OBSTACLE COURSE

OBSACLE COURSE

Objective: Students will create an obstacle course based on prepositions like over, under, around, and through.

Cognitive Link: Learning academic skills through the kinesthetic modality increases understanding. Creativity is a higher order thinking skill.

Academic Concepts: Parts of speech: preposition

Equipment: Use the preposition cards created for Sparks of Speech game. Lots of varieties of equipment to build an obstacle course: hula-hoops, tinkling poles, jump ropes, mats, chairs, parachutes, steps, tires, or anything else you find that's available. An obstacle course can be built with no equipment if you use human bodies as the obstacles, but there's not as much activity for those who are the stationary obstacles.

Organization: Designate a very large play area in which to build the obstacle course. Decide where the course should begin and end. Divide the students into groups of 3-4 people.Have lots of equipment available. Instruct the students that all equipment should be returned to the same place at the end of the activity. Assign an area for each group to work in.

Anticipatory Set: Teacher's Quote: "Play the familiar childhood game "Going on a Bear Hunt". The seated students beat out a rhythm on their knees and pretend to go down the road, through the woods, around a tree, over the mountain, in a cave where they see a bear who chases them back home in fast reverse order using the same motions. The repeated phrase in the game is "Can't go over it. Can't go under it. Can't go around it. Better go through it."

Words like over, under, around, and through are all parts of speech called prepositions. They tell us about where the position is. Usually a preposition is linked to the verb (action). Let's put these prepositions into action by creating our own prepositional obstacle course where we can go over something, under something, around something, or through something."

Activity: It's important to honor the creativity of each group while setting guidelines for safety.
Assign each group a preposition to act out. Instruct the groups to use a variety of equipment available in a station that acts out their word. For example, Over = tinkling poles stuck in chair legs creating a hurdle; under = under a parachute suspended from volleyball poles.

After each group creates their station, connect the stations by creating ways that the participants can travel from one station to the next (Example: put hula-hoops in a line and each person must jump from one station to the other like lily pads.)
When the creation of the obstacle course is complete, have each group explain the station and tell which preposition they are acting out. Two students at a time take turns going through each station in order from start to finish.

Stress safety: "It's NOT a race. If you knock down something you should fix it before moving on." Assign "doctors" at each station to fix the station or to return equipment to the correct place for the next runner. Rotate runners and doctors. After the activity is over each group returns the equipment to the proper place.

Closure: Teacher's Quote: "Name some prepositions that we learned today. What did we do in the "around" station? Process each station."