Total Physical Response (TPR)

"Words are the voice of the heart." - Confucius 
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Total Physical Response (TPR) is a teaching technique developed by Dr. James Asher, in which, students respond to language input with body motions. TPR or as Dr. Asher defines it, "language body conversations," is one of the ways infants learn language. They see adults' facial movements and gestures associated with a word and model it. TPR has been very effective in teaching vocabulary and grammar. Check out the slides and the bookmarks below.
Tips and Web Tools
  • ​Fingerplays and Chants- Children love playing with their fingers and making them into characters. Children not only build vocabulary with finger plays but many teach young learners to count.
    • Finger plays and chants incorporate TPR. Check out Cullen’s ABC’s free videos for young learners. 
    • Create a digital poster, such as Buncee, with lyrics and music to popular children’s songs, such as “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Embed a Youtube video showing the movements to make it easier for children to learn the song. Send the digital poster to parents so they sing the songs at home with their children.
    • Check out this Buncee of "Head, Shoulder, Knees, and Toes.​"
    • Check out this Buncee of the “Itsy, Bitsy Spider.”
    • See this example of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” embedded on my English Story Time Wiki. 
  • Play classroom games like Simon Says! 
    • Students will enjoy learning vocabulary by playing charades, Pictionary, and Bingo. Find other popular vocabulary learning games here, here, and here. 
    • Very young learners will enjoy playing sight word games. Find tons here.
  • Incorporate into story time.
    • Before reading the story associate key vocabulary or phrases from the book with different motions. While reading the story aloud, students should listen for the key words and perform the associated movement.
    • The students could also make a sound when doing the movement. For example, if a story features an ocean, then students can mimic ocean waves with their hands and say, “Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.”       
  • Teach movements, directions, and words to chants or lyrics with flash cards then associate a movement.
  • Name Action Syllables- This is a great game that uses Total Physical Response (TPR) to remember names. Gather learners in a circle. Students greet the class with their names and associate an action with each syllable of their names for the class to repeat. For example, I might snap for “Shel” and stomp my foot for “ly.” The class says,“Hi Shel (snaps) ly (stomps),” repeating the actions.
  • Get students to do stretches or yoga and when they touch that part of the body they can name what they are doing.

​More Resources