Teaching Children

TPR & TPRS Lesson Planning

Lesson plan for any 1 hour class: plan for 50 minutes and allow for 10 minutes of classroom management or unexpected things. Also have one extra activity in case you finish early.

[ 5 mins ] Review of previous day’s target vocabulary

[25-30 mins] Action and processing new material

[15 mins] Assessing – 5-10 sentences according to time/ Pop up grammar

[unless students are not yet literate, then the assessment is simply whether they respond with their bodies to commands and verbally with “yes/no” or choices. Try one word assessments: listing verbs on board, number, have them match verb with picture. Competition to write verb first and hold up when you say it.

Preparation:

Make stick figure pictures on sheets and laminate for vocab to TPR/ have tape ready to stick them on the board. For examples see Ramiro Garcia’s: How to Apply TPR for Best Results and The Graphics Book

1. TPR the words - Use their whole bodies

a. Model / Hesitate / Stop

b. No more than 3 words at a time and recycle - combine two commands with “and” and make sure they can do both at the same time, like “touch your head and sing, jump and turn, raise your hand and walk to the wall”

c. “one hand touches the knee, one hand touches the ear, one hand touches the floor, one hand touches the eye, etc.” – this is really funny the faster you go. The hands are flying everywhere.

d. Novel commands – consist of words you taught, but in new, unusual combinations that you do NOT model. Example- if they know “touch the head with the pen” and “touch the table”. Now give them “touch the table with the head” but do not model it. The fun is in watching them get it themselves.

e. Vary size of groups – boys and girls or half the class / 3 people at a time.

f. Chain commands – these are 3 things that are NOT done at the same time, like ‘walk to the table, pick up the book, put it on your nose” [ you will have to teach them to wait until you’ve finished the 3^rd command before they start, especially if you do not speak their language]

g. Assess- have them close their eyes while you give commands. Try to see who may need help. Decide if you need to teach a little more slowly if less then 80 % of the people are getting it.

Processing activities:

2. Hold two pics at a time- one in each hand and call out for one to be pointed to by students – far right or far left. Raise the correct one after.

3. Call for 5 students to stand in front of the class each holding one picture. As the teacher calls out the action, the person holding the corresponding picture to raises and lowers correct picture. Increase speed when you’re sure they have it to help them hear target language at native speed.

4. Stick up the pictures on the board. Number them below and call out the action in the target language for the students to respond through numbers [in their own language until they learn numbers in target language]

5. Have students compete to draw quickly on mini-chalk boards when you shout out action and tell them to raise quickly when finished. Erasable boards are good, or have them fold and tear paper for 8 sides to draw on.

6. In pairs, one student draws a picture and shows it to his partner and the other says the command.

7. Tapette - Divide the class into 2 teams, they select goofy name and motto. Then call for one person from each group. Have 10 pictures taped to the board. Give the two people the fly swatters and call out the picture. The first to hit it gets the point.

8. Charades – Write command on slips of paper and students choose, read silently, act out, others guess in target language.

9. Teacher touches - one picture and gives choices while teaching “he” and “she” - example “He’s touching or standing up?” “she’s sitting down or he’s sitting down?” Gives students opportunity to start producing, but based on teacher’s model.

10. Three Ring Circus: Put three children up front [have male/female mix] each performing a different action, but only ONE action. Be careful that it is an action that is not uncomfortable to repeat, like one person might be touching his head, the other walking to the door and the last one looking at the window. Then do circle questioning. Use the children’s names at first then insert “he” and “she” where appropriate.

11. Structure for Circling Questions – 4 questions from easy to hard. For beginners, use only inflection in the voice to make the question, keeping the same form used for the statement. New students will unknowingly repeat the question part of the sentence in their answers because they don’t yet understand it is the part of the sentence that creates the question.

12. [+] . He is clapping? – first students answer in target language “yes” and teacher confirms and says, “Yes, he is clapping” in target language.

[-] . He is jumping? – students answer “no“ and teacher confirms, “ No, he is not jumping, he is clapping.

[_/_] . Choice – he is jumping or he is clapping? “ Students answer “clapping” and teacher confirms, “Yes, he is clapping.” When giving a choice, change only ONE WORD – either the noun, verb, adverb, or subject. For beginners, use the same words you used in #1 and #2.

[?] What is he doing? [If there is no answer, that means there is no comprehension so you should go back to “choice” repeat step #3 and then try #4 again.

13. First stick to one picture for all the 4 questions and then go ahead with the other pictures. For more advanced questioning, mix the 4 levels among many pictures.

14. Can also be used with stick figures once the real humans have been used “ John is touching his head, yes or no? He is touching his nose

Variation for teaching “my” and “your” J - After the students touch their own body parts, chairs, tables, words, etc. The teacher teaches “my” and tells the students to “ touch MY arms, or MY stomach, or table, etc.” and the kids rush up together to touch the teacher. It is adorable.

Assessment:

Write out words that have been TPRed. First “one at a time” – like just 1 verb or 1 object - not in sentences. If they show mastery of the following routine with one word, then continue with whole sentences. See if they can tolerate little new additions like plurals, negatives, and narrative instead of commands.

a. Number the words/sentences and write them on the board in the target language.

b. Read in the target language out of order, they shout out the number

c. Call out in English out of order, they shout out the number

d. They translate aloud one by one after you say “who thinks they can tell me what #1 means?” etc.

e. Pop up grammar - introduce them to it – give them grammar according to the meaning and context, not grammatical terms.

f. Homework: have them keep a picture dictionary in the form of index cards to make flash cards. Each action and noun should have a stick figure drawing they do themselves. Encourage using different colors.