The Sporty Man
Total Physical Response
This activity has the purpose to make students is to internalize through movements some vocabulary and tenses. For this, we used a Total Physical Response activity, using one of the topics of the unit ‘The world of sports’ of the textbook ‘Travelers’ given by the government to 7th grade elementary students. The objective of this activity is that by the end of it, students have already understood when someone refers to past progressive.
The only material needed is “The Sporty man” story.
The teacher explains to the class that they will hear a story of a man who really did love sports. The idea is that the class can identify which sentences are in past progressive tense – grammatical construction that they already know from a previous class –by executing the movements to each sport mentioned ONLY if it is PP. First, the teacher gives an example and performs it. He/she repeats several times the same example just to make sure students have all understood what they have to do {Example: Once upon a time there was (Looks for any sign of movement and continues) a man whose hobby was singing (Imitates a microphone and singing) in the shower}. Then, the story takes place.
As we can see, despite the fact that a TPR activity does not require a big amount of material, it is not as easy to use one in the classroom as it may looks. The commands or instructions must be very precise or we are in danger of failing in the process of the activity. For successful TPR activities it is always good to have creativity and energy, not only to perform the activity itself, but to inspire the students to enjoy those moments.