TPR to do

I aspire to make my TPR as good as Lara’s one day, but I was confused by what she’d told me versus what I saw.  She said that she made the gestures up with the kids, but then demonstrated gestures she’d already made up.  I think I like that better, not because I don’t have a STUPENDOUS memory for class-to-class variation, but because it has a definite starting place.  Otherwise how do the kids ever know what the word means?  Or would it have to be combined with the image/word powerpoint thing?  I suppose that could only help reinforce it.  Then again–though Lara swears it worked like magic–I wonder if my sophomores would not think themselves above the simplistic motion repeating and refuse?  So much of what one can pull off has to do with one’s personality and style, and practically sharing a name does not mean we can pull off the same types of activities.  Or maybe I do not believe enough in TPR that way, and it would show…

I think I will try the “follow me” TPR model first.  My students have never been big on vocabulary choice in any form I’ve offered it thus far, and so it’d be better for me to just lay out my gesture suggestions, and if someone (like Cierra or Hayden) has a brilliant suggestion on another way, there’s no reason I couldn’t switch.

I do, according to comments, need to be careful about making rope gestures look like milking a cow.

As for the synonyms from this book in particular, I think both words for “jump” are important to teach, but I worry about the students making false connections if I differentiate the gestures. However, having taught the words for jump, I think I’d like to have students find the 2 other synonyms for rope based on context, rather than each getting its own gesture.