Julie recently wrote here about the absolute prime role of TPR in setting up her vPQA program in November. We have talked about TPR a lot, but, if you are like me, you need to take it up a level. The fact is, having observed Julie and other DPS teachers over the past year, and seeing the focus Eric Herman has given it in his own classroom, I realize that over the years I have blown it off as something simpler and less effective than it is, and that that was a mistake.
As we set our sights on how we want to begin next year, if we do plan some vPQA in our instruction, and we would be crazy not to (see Primers for more on vPQA), then we need to make sure we have our TPR game totally down as well, because the one depends on the other. And, of course, TPR is not just a big player in vPQA, it’s a big player in everything we do in our work with TPRS/CI. It is not just something to start the year with to teach verbs. It is a constant tool we can use throughout the year to make sure our kids know the most important parts of the language we teach – the army of verbs.
Here is what Julie said in the Primers on TPR to start the year:
I use sit down, stand up, turn around, raise your hand, enter, exit, return, take out, put away, open, close, throw away, pick up, walk toward, run toward, write, draw, read, etc. I then teach them every object in the classroom such as pencil, pen, book, piece of paper, smart board, wall, floor, chair, desk, door, window, etc.
I begin by introducing stand up, sit down and chair and desk. We practice these over and over and I have a poster of adverbs on the wall that I slowly introduce to make things more exciting. Examples of my adverbs are slowly, quickly, silently, crazily, perfectly, bored, excitedly, romantically, etc. I will say things such as stand up crazily, turn around slowly and sit down perfectly. They simply TPR the actions. Then I introduce the term “like” and will tell them things like sit down bored, stand up like a zombie and turn around like a ninja. Again, this makes things more interesting but all the while you are simply teaching them the classroom commands (yet masked with a lot of fun).
Slowly, I then introduce take out, open, close and put away and teach them book, notebook, piece of paper, door, window, closet.