ESL chants are a great way to teach vocabulary in your ESL / EFL classroom.  This chant is a really easy and effective way to teach prepositions.  The best thing about the Preposition Chant is that the only thing you’ll need to play is an eraser.

How to use the Preposition Chant:

1. Instruct your students to take out their erasers.
2. Put your eraser on your hand and say “on“. Make sure the class is following your lead and putting their erasers on their hands and repeating “on”.
   
3. Flick your eraser a few feet in the air, catch it in the palm of your hand and then say “in“. Once again, wait for the class to copy you. At this point they should have already started to figured out that they are supposed to follow your lead.
   
4. Slam your hand onto your desk with the eraser under your hand and say “under“. Your ESL students should know by this point that they are repeating your actions.
   
5. Leave the eraser on you desk and move your hand to the side of it. Say “Next to.” Once again the class should be repeating.
6. Move your other hand onto your desk on the opposite side of your eraser and say “Between.”
   
7. Move your hand behind the eraser so that the eraser is in front of it and say “In front“.
   
8. Finally, move your hand in front of the eraser so that the eraser is behind your hand and say “behind.”
   
9. Repeat steps 2 – 8 until the class can do it without your help.
   
10. *It’s important to keep in mind that the preposition chant refers to the placement of the eraser and not where your hand is.
    
    

The entire chant only has 7 prepositions so it’s very easy for any student to master quickly. The repetition helps students internalize the vocabulary and the actions of putting the eraser in corresponding places makes understanding easy.

Once your ESL students have mastered the Preposition Chant you can easily move onto other ESL activities (like this one) that help them use their newly acquired knowledge.

Enjoy!