We are working on Stage 14 in my Latin 2 CP class right now, and we are having a lot of fun with prepositions and the cases they take. I was trying to think of a way to get students to understand how prepositions work in Latin (and just to learn what they mean), so I came up with this series of activities, and it’s worked really well these past 2 days:

• After explaining prepositions that need ablative objects vs. accusative objects, we did a quick round of “Prepositions Charades.” I wrote about 10 phrases out on some cards using two objects we have in our classroom: a Beanie Baby lion (leo) and our flat-top rolling desks (mensa). The phrases were things like “sub leone” and “in mensā.” Students volunteered to act out two phrases while the rest of the class wrote the phrase they were acting out on our mini white-boards. They had a lot of fun with this one, and it was quick and easy.
• Then I let them work in pairs to take at least 7 pictures with prepositional phrases – basically doing what we had just done, but creating the phrases on their own. They were allowed to use any item in the classroom, so the pictures involved a lot of books and chairs, but some students also used my stress pears (pear-shaped stress balls provided by Pear Deck) and some of my Funko Pop figures. They inserted the photos and the captions into a Google Slides template that I made for them and distributed via PowerSchool Learning (formerly Haiku, our LMS).
• When we meet again on Thursday, I will have a Pear Deck presentation prepared for them featuring most of their photos. Depending on the photo, students will write the prepositional phrase they think is depicted or answer questions about the photo. The students seem excited about this one; they love seeing their work displayed for others, even “just” their own classmates.

This has been a pretty simple lesson, but they are enjoying it, and it seems to be helping them get the hang of how prepositional phrases are structured.

Examples of student work below!