Let's Start OUT with....

With OUT and UP. These are the most commonly used prepositions in phrasal verbs. For proof, look at the following chart:

The 150 most common phrasal verbs from the PHaVE Dictionary are here...represented by their prepositions, all 13 of them. Admittedly, there are more phrasal verbs and more prepositions....but OUT and UP are clearly the most adapted for use with phrasal verbs.

For kicks, let's start with OUT. Let's look at the extended metaphors of OUT:

Of course it's way more fun to organize these in colorful, playful way, starting from core meaning and moving outwards to increasingly abstract meanings.

I also tried organizing the different senses of the preposition OUT into a 3x3 grid, moving from the core meaning in the top left corner to what I considered the most abstract meaning in the bottom right corner:

This is just a start of course. The next question is, how to I translate this understanding into something memorable, something truly visible for my students? Lesson plans coming soon...