Graffiti Parties

Here one of my students is decorating my t-shirt

Do you ever have a chance to throw a celebration in your classes?

In the summer I teach a temporary job where students from all over the world come to San Diego to visit the city and practice their English.

Saturday my Italian students left, so we had a small party at the end of class on Friday to send them off! Students were encouraged to bring an old t-shirt or buy an SDSU t-shirt at the college gift store. Those who did not bring a shirt participated by making, "memory books."

Students were given easy rules, "Write in English only unless you want to add your name or a brief phrase in your native language." I normally keep it to English only, but Italian students like having Japanese and Taiwanese words on their shirts, and I consider it sharing cultures!

My finished t-shirt!

That's pretty much it! Students can wear the shirt and have other students write on them, or the shirts can be placed on desks. I find sharpies work best to keep the writing permanent. If students have problems writing on the shirts you can tape them down or put sandpaper under them to make them stick. They are easier to write on if someone is wearing them, but with older students you need to be sure they are only writing in appropriate places.

For 15-30 minutes students go around class asking, "Will you write on my shirt," and "Teacher, how do you spell enough?" I have never had problems with students writing inappropriate things, but if this did happen I would simply remove the student from the party and give them a worksheet to finish.

Students enjoy this, and I usually keep the radio on for background noise.

Our beautiful blackboard that doubled as a backdrop

If a few students finish early I normally ask them if they would like to decorate a board that we can use as a backdrop for pictures.

In this case one of my students created a red, white and blue background which stated the name of the University where the classes took and the year. I think she made it look quite nice given the fact that she was dealing with a chalkboard!

I won't embarrass my students by posting pictures of them online, but here's a corny picture of me posing in front of the blackboard.

If I wanted to make it look better, I could crop out the tables, but I kept them in to let you see we were dealing with your normal crowded classroom!

I know this seems like a pointless activity, but students practiced their English, listened to some English music, took thousands of pictures, and have a memento to make sure they never forget their time at SDSU. Plus, I get a memento of them!

You can see the t-shirt that they made for me (above) is a lot of "thank you" along with some personalized messages that will always make me smile when I wear it.

Do you do anything special the last day of school?

Circle of Life - First Day Activity

This is a simple, "Getting to know you," activity that I have also incorporated into my literature classes.

While it was not designed to focus on grammar points it does fit nicely into:
Questions"Is it _________?"
"Do you ____________?"
"Are you _____________?"
Tag Questions (if you wish)
"You're 21, aren't you?"
Simple Present / Simple Past
You have three cats.
You learned to ride a bike at 15. 

To start I make a large circle on the board and put random numbers in it. For example 32, 29, 4, 1, 18, etc. To add some variety you can add words or sketches as well.

Then I have students guess what these numbers are. A sample interaction could go like this:
Student 1: "You are 32 years old."
Me: "Great guess, but nope. I am not 32 years old yet."
Student 2: "You have 32 boyfriends."
Me: "No, that's far too many."
I let this continue as long as students are interested. If the questions start dying down, and no one has the correct answer, I tell them "I've travelled to 32 countries"

Then we continue with the next number.
29- I am 29 years old
4- My parents had four children.
1- I have one cat.
18- I crashed my car at 18.

Make sure your example has variety! If everyone just has their address, and how old they are it gets old very fast! However, if you have some unique experiences, it makes this a lot more fun.

Some numbers my students used:
How many times they had been to the USA.
How old they were when they first left the country.
How many years they have studied English.
When they started studying English.
How old their pet is.
How many languages they speak.
etc.

I have students first make their circle at their desk on a notecard or scrap paper. Then I ask for volunteers who would like to present.Note: When I do this it is very rare that the entire class presents. You could also do it in small groups if you want to make sure everyone presents, but I don't like forcing students to the front of the class on day one. This is a good way to see what students will be volunteering, what students will be asking questions and what students may need a little prodding.

Students like this way of getting to know one another. It is more dynamic than just standing up and introducing themselves!

This is also a great activity to use when talking about characters. Students (or the teacher) can use it to get the rest of the class to guess what numbers are significant for any character from a novel, or an author. I like to put students in small groups and assign each group a different character. This lets them collaborate.

This activity is great because it creates disequilibrium. The random seemingly unrelated numbers and words don't make a clear patter. Students are forced to create equilibrium by creating sensible patterns and associations for them. Even when students guess incorrectly they are still forced to reason and more likely to remember the real numbers significances. This process makes the answers stick in their brains more effectively than if they were simply told all the facts at the beginning.

You can adapt it in MANY ways. Get specific. Tell them that they have to make the circle about their family, school, summer vacation, favorite movies, etc. Students will be able to do this on almost any topic if you give them guidance.

What's your favorite, "Get to know you" activity to use with your students?

You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!

Preparing for the August ELT Blog Carnival

Humor dosn't always mean acting like a clown!

The 41st ELT Blog Carnival is DONE! Check it out: http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2014/08/41st-elt-blog-carnival-teaching-with.html

Since my July and August are shaping up to be pretty busy, I thought I would announce the August ELT (English Language Teaching) Blog Carnival now and give bloggers plenty of time!

Are you unsure what a blog carnival is? The ELT Blog Carnival home page has examples from all of the past 40 carnivals.

The August ELT Blog Carnival will be filled with blogs about humor.

I am a teacher who strongly believes that humor makes classrooms better! This Blog Carnival is designed to let other teachers share how they use humor in the class, so that other teachers may be inspired from them!

How to participate?

There are three big ways you can participate!

• Submit your post
• If you have an amazing older post that you have written on humor in the ELT field (EFL, ESL, ESP, EAP, etc.) send it my way.
• Alternatively, if you feel inspired, you can write up a new post. There are SO MANY different aspects of humor you can touch on. If you are stuck, look at these questions for inspiration: 



Many students find mustaches amusing

• Do you have a lesson that revolves around a funny movie clip or a silly joke? Perfect!
• Do you have a knock knock joke you use in class that is an example of blended speech? We'd love to see it!
• Do you have a rewards system or class theme that is funny? Share it! 
• Have you read a book about using humor in the classroom and you want to review it? Awesome!
• Is there a website with funny quotes you use in class? Review it!
• Is there a tech tool you use that makes your students laugh? Explain it!
• How much humor is OK or When is humor not appropriate? Discuss it!
• Do you have a story about a time humor really brought a student out of his/her shell? We'd LOVE to hear it.
• As you can see there are TONS of opportunities! Simply find the topic that calls out to you!
• If you feel inspired to write but you don't have a blog, contact me! I would be pleased to host you as a guest blogger. 
• When you write a new post it would be nice to include a link to here http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2014/07/preparing-for-august-elt-blog-carnival.html so your readers can learn more and participate if they would like. 
• Share this post so others can get involved! (You can share this via Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, family board game night, your Nobel Prize acceptance speech, or anywhere else you think you could reach people who are interested). To make it easy for you, by clicking this link http://ctt.ec/qT9Oa you will tweet, "Im ready for the August #eltBlogCarnival on humor http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2014/07/preparing-for-august-elt-blog-carnival.html Pls Join"
• Come back August 6th to read all the lovely blogs! You can keep track of everything via #eltBlogCarnival on Twitter! Or just go to the Blog Carnival.

Funny mug! (If you can't read it the text is here)

To submit your blog you have three options:
1. Tweet it to Carissa Peck (@eslcarissa)
2. Use the general ELT Blog Carnival submission form.
3. Leave your link in the comments of this post

Please try to get all submissions in by Saturday, August 2nd!

For those of you who don't want to participate, but are eager to see the results check back on Wednesday August 6th! You can also leave a comment here and I'll be sure to remind you when August rolls around.

If you have any questions or have a request for a specific blog leave it as a comment!

How NOT to teach minimal pairs

There's a bad moon
or there's a bathroom?

 I am still on a pronunciation kick from the most recent blog carnival! I am also thinking about the ELT Research Carnival where I wrote about the importance of bottom up skills in listening. This post mixes those two ideas with minimal pairs.

Minimal pairs can a fun way to test a students pronunciation or listening skills.

A common activity is to give students a worksheet and have them circle the word that they hear.

For example, "I really love to eat ( bears / pears )."

Do you see the problem with this?

It doesn't really require any listening skills. Most (normal) people would answer pears. They know that contextually eating bears is not something that happens, or at least not where I live in Mexico or where I grew up in San Diego.

Compare this to the Credence Clearwater song, "There's a bad moon on the rise." Many people hear, "There's a bathroom on the right." Both sentences make sense! That's why it can be tricky.

The other thing some teachers overlook is the types of minimal pairs. My Mexican students have no problem pronouncing (or hearing) the difference between l and r. Giving them activities using words like lice and rice wouldn't help them.

Of course, if you have a mixed class you can include activities which focus on all students needs, but if you are teaching a class with speakers of similar backgrounds be sure to pick sounds they will struggle with.


If you aren't sure what your students need to practice, that's OK. This is when I highly suggest picking up a copy of Swan's Learner English. A book I found beyond valuable when I first started teaching, and I still reference when I am exposed to speakers whose languages I don't know.

On TPT I put a free worksheet that I made for my TOEFL students. It focuses on the sounds that my Mexican students needed to practice. There are three activities:

1. Two stories use minimal pairs that are interchangeable in the sentences. This can be read to the class with students selecting what they hear (as a purely listening exercise) or with students in pairs taking turns. One student would read the first story making sure to carefully enunciate, and the partner would try to guess what they were saying. Then they would switch for the second story. 
2. There's also a BINGO board for some fun practice. 
3. Finally there's a writing activity where students make their own. After they can read it to the class and have students try to guess what they said. 

I've talked about other ways to practice minimal pairs like jokes, and comics and I still standby those as great techniques. Just make sure to keep the few tips this blog talked about.

What about you? What do you think teachers should keep in mind when working on minimal pairs (or any pronunciation) with students?

Catenation with Jokes!

I like to protect my iPhone:
Justin case

 I love connected speech. I love making English easier to hear (and pronounce naturally) and I think that connected speech is a big part of that. This blog won’t really discuss the whys of connected speech, rather it will cover one type of connected speech and give jokes that show it off. 

Catenation is something I talked about briefly in a different blog post on elision and jokes. This is essentially when the last consonant of the first word is joined to the first vowel of the next word. I took a little liberty with this definition when selecting my jokes; to be honest most of these are examples of other areas of blended speech. However, I think you'll see the main idea is there. This is very very common in English, and can be very confusing for students when listening. For example when saying, "Just in case" some speakers may hear, "Justin case."

I think that we can show catenation in two different ways. First by showing examples of jokes where we see that words have blended together

Who's there?
This work by Phillip Martin is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ketchup. Ketchup who? Ketchup and I’ll tell you
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Issabelle. Isabelle who? Is a bell working?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Haden. Haden who? Haden seek isn’t fair when you lock the door!
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Seymour. Seymour who? Seymour of me if you just opened the door.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Gopher. Gopher who? Gopher help! Your house is under attack.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Europe. Europe who? Europe to no good with all these questions.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Eileen. Eileen who? Eileen down bang my head on your door and all you do is ask, “Who’s there.”
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Icy. Icy who? Icy you through the crack; let me in!
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Isabelle. Isabelle who? Isabelle not needed on your door?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Doris. Doris who? Doris stuck –let me in.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Albie. Albie who? Albie back I forgot something.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Phillip. Phillip who? Phillip my candy bag or I’ll never stop trick or treating here.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Leena. Leena who? Leena little forward and you can see me in the peephole.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Mikey. Mikey who? Mikey is not working can you let me in?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Watson. Watson who? Watson your TV right now that prevents you from opening the door?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Albie. Albie who? Albie explaining later.

If you have an aversion to knock knock jokes don't worry! Lots of other jokes work too:

Mr. & Mrs. Hippie!

• What’s the difference between a piano and a fish? You can’t tuna fish.
• What do you call a hippie’s wife? Mississippi.
• Why did everyone like the mushroom? He was a fungi.
• What did the mother buffalo say when her son left? Bison.
• Why did the chef stop making spaghetti? He pasta way.  

We can also have longer jokes if you want to use the joke to introduce new vocabulary or work on verb tenses

• A magazine published that Cleopatra used to have a milk bath every day. to prevent the effects of aging. She quickly paid a visit to her local dairy and asked for enough milk to fill up a bathtub. The man was used to all sorts of requests so he just asked, “Do you want it pasteurized” and she replied, “No, just to my chest I think I can splash my face.”

The other way I think we can show catenation is by using jokes that take a word usually is one word but dividing it into two or more different words. This shows that even when we try to pronounce two words separately they often end up sounding like one word. For example:

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ben. Ben who? Ben dover so I can kick you for making me wait in the cold.   
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Norma Lee. Norma Lee who? Norma Lee I don’t make a habit of knocking on doors, but I really need to see you.
• Why won’t you starve in the desert? Because of all the sand which is there. 
• What do ghosts serve for dessert? Ice Cream 
• Where did Noah store the fish with wheels? In the carp ark.
• What makes the three eared alien similar to star trek? It has the left ear, the right ear, and the final front ear.
• Two peanuts walked into a bar. One was a salted.   
• A termite walks into a bar and asks, “Is the bar tender here.”   
• What do you call a camel with a flat back? Hump free!   
• Who made the best prehistoric clothes? A dino sewer.

As with the last category this one can also have longer jokes. These two were both originally "Walks into a bar" jokes. I changed one so it could be used without the bar (not appropriate for all cultures) For example:

*If you are the owner of this graphic please let me know
so I can attribute it or remove it per your request.

• A young boy comes to school every day with a lizard on his shoulder. Everyday the students point and stare but no one ever asks him about it. Finally one girl walks up and asks him, "What's your lizards name." He responds, "Tiny." The girl stands in silence before pushing the topic further, "Why do you call him Tiny?" The boy smiles and proudly responds, "Because he's my newt."
• A string walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’m sorry but we don't serve strings here.” He goes outside, messes with his hair and tangles his body into a knot. He walks back into the bar and the bartender looks at him, “Hey aren’t you the string I just kicked out of here?” The string responds, “No, I am a frayed not.”

Even if you thought these jokes were lame, I am willing to bet that you cracked a smile at least once! I highly suggest you find a way to work jokes into your lesson. You can always adapt them to fit your topic, use them as an ice breaker, let students find new ones online etc. If you ever use any of these in class (or have a few more you think fit this category) let me know!

Elision with Jokes

I love bringing some humor into the classroom. Too often do students equate English with boring grammar they only use in the classroom. Jokes have a way of making things more fun and these jokes help them sound more natural when they speak (a great plus for many students)

You can use any sort of jokes when teaching. Some prefer longer jokes so they can interact with more text (verbs, vocabulary, etc.).

Since this blog is for the 34th ELT Blog Carnival it will focus on using blog posts for pronunciation. With pronunciation I prefer using shorter jokes so the students don't need to understand or follow a longer sequence. They can hear the unexpected answer and react almost instantly. This instant satisfaction makes learning jokes (or puns) fun.

I think jokes can be used for many many different things, but this post will point out specific jokes we can use to highlight elision in English language speakers. 

Elision- happens often in English speech. In short, this is when we lose a sound to make it easier for us to talk. I think (and this has no merit at all) one of the most common elisions is when we drop the H.

• So, let's check out these examples where we drop the H  



I suppose that is what an elephino would look like

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ada. Ada Who? Ada bad dream last night. (HAD a bad dream.) 
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Adder. Adder who? Adder lot for lunch, so I am not hungry now. (HAD a lot. In this case we also see a shwa ə make an appearance)Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ooze. Ooze who? Ooze in charge around here? (WHO’s in Charge?)
• How does the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it. (HE clips it)
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Betty. Betty who? Betty has friends who don’t make him stand outside! (Bet HE has friends.)
• It's OK if you hate knock knock jokes, we can use other ones too!
• What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino? Elephino. (HELL if I know)
• How do fleas travel? They itch-hike. (HITCH-hike)

Even though I favor examples of dropping the H sound, there are a lot of jokes that drop other sounds.

• We drop A
• What did one ball say to the other hand? Nothing he just looked round. (around)
• We drop D
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Stand. Stan who? Stan away from the door I’m kicking it open. (Stand)
• We drop T
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Juana. Juana who? Juana go to the mall with me?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Iris. Iris who? Iris my case; I just can’t explain any more.
• Who do vampires tend to fall in love with? The girl necks door.
• We drop the Y
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Canoe. Canoe who? Canoe lend me some money I missed the bus and need to take a taxi. 

You can use jokes to teach more than one pronunciation concept as well. I'll be doing another post soon about catenation and jokes, but for now just know that catenaton is when one word merges with another word. These are jokes that have Catenation and Elision at once:

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Alison. Alison who? Alison to all sorts of music, and you?
• We drop the /t/ in I listen and combine the two words.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Thermos. Thermos who? Thermos be a better punch line than this!
• We drop the /t/ in must and combine There and must.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Howl. Howl who? Howl you know unless you let me in?
• We drop the vowel in "will" and combine How and l.
• When does a horse talk? Whinny wants to.
• Here we drop the /h/ in he and combine Whenn and e together to make whinny. (Note: This is one of those jokes where you may want to pre-teach the vocabulary first (that a whinny is a sound a horse makes) otherwise your students probably won't find it so funny.) 

So the next time you roll your eyes at a silly pun or knock knock joke. Stop. Think about what it is manipulating in the English language and how you could use that with your students.

I'd love to know if you've ever used jokes in your class to work on pronunciation, or what your favorite joke is! Just drop a note in the comments :-)

The 34th ELT Blog Carnival- Pronunciation

Can having perfect pronunciation be problematic?

Thank you so much for all of your contributions. The blog carnival has been published here http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2013/09/elt-blog-carnival-pronunciation.html so no more submissions are being accepted.

Since the 33rd ELT Blog Carnival will be published on August 1st, I thought I would announce the 34th ELT (English Language Teaching) Blog Carnival!

Are you unsure what a blog carnival is? The ELT Blog Carnival home page has examples from all of the past 33 carnivals. 

The 34th ELT Blog Carnival is available here. The theme is pronunciation!

I feel that pronunciation has always been one of my weakest points as a teacher. I hope that by hosting this blog I'll get some great ideas from other teachers so I can improve my own teaching.

How to participate?
There are three big ways you can participate!

1.  Submit your post The Carnival has been posted, so submissions are no longer being accepted.
   
• If you have an amazing older post that you have written on pronunciation in the ELT field (EFL; ESL, ESP, EAP, etc.) send it my way.
• Alternatively, if you feel inspired, you can write up a new post. There are SO MANY different aspects of pronunciation you can touch on. If you are stuck, look at these questions for inspiration: 
• How do you teach a specific sound (like th)?
• What pronunciation should teachers teach? (Accents, Formal, etc.)
• How picky should teachers be when assessing a students pronunciation? 
• Should pronunciation have more time in the class than it currently has? 
• What technological tools can we use to help us teach pronunciation?
• What games are best used to help student practice? 
• What homework can we give for pronunciation? 
• How do you teach pronunciation to a deaf student (or a student with a speech impediment in their L1?)? 
• What is the best way to grade pronunciation?
• Do tongue twisters actually help in class?
• etc.
• If you feel inspired to write but you don't have a blog contact me! I am happy to host you as a guest blogger.
• When you write a new post it would be nice to include a link to here  http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-34th-elt-blog-carnival-pronunciation.html
  so your readers can learn more and participate if they want.
2. Share this post so others can get involved!  (You can share this via Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, family board game night, your wedding vows, or wherever else you feel you could reach people who are interested).
3. Come back September 2nd to read all the lovely blogs! You can keep track of everything via #eltBlogCarnival on twitter! Or just go to the Blog Carnival.

To submit your blog you have three options: 

1. Fill out this form.
2. Tweet it to Carissa Peck (@eslcarissa)
3. Use the general ELT Blog Carnival submission form.

Please try to get all submissions in by August 31st!

For those of you who don't have a blog, but are eager to see the results check back on Monday September 2nd! You can also leave a comment here and I'll be sure to remind you when September rolls around.

If you have any questions or have a request for a specific blog leave it as a comment!

Thank you so much for all of your contributions. The blog carnival has been published here http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2013/09/elt-blog-carnival-pronunciation.html so no more submissions are being accepted.

Get MOVING in EFL (aka YAY for TPR)

Throughout this blog I discuss different ways to use TPR in the your English class. Essentially TPR (Total physical response) is a technique which is often used with EFL students. Students are taught to associate an action with a word or phrase.

Asher's book

HISTORY 1965 James Asher basically said, "Hey! I am sure that we can get students to actually move around and have less stress in class." What he came up with was having students move to show comprehension. You can check out more TPR World or language impact for more background information.


Even though the basis for TPR in EFL started over 30 years ago there is still a bounty of current research being done to support using actions with language teaching. One of my favorites to direct people to is an article published by New Scientist in January of 2012 which discusses a study where 20 students enrolled in a 6 day course to learn a fake language. Half of the content was taught using traditional (spoken and written) techniques and the other half was taught with each word having a body movement. The students did better at learning the information that was taught with motions! Keep in mind that this worked for all words, not just words with a clear motion. That is to say, this technique worked as well for actions like run as it did for words like however or rather. The study goes onto cite functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans as well which seem to show that the actions help by creating a more "complex representation of the word that makes it more easily retrieved." You can read the actual study via the onine library if that interests you.


Now that you know a bit of what it is, let's check out how to use it:

Poor Joe, he has no....

Games

• Simon Says- Usually body parts and actions but you could get specific with adjectives. "Simon says jump up and down quickly."
• Charades- Usually this is done when a student is given a word and they have to act it out. Great with verbs, but don't be afraid to do this with nouns or adjectives. You can make it more complicated by giving them an entire sentence!
• Oh No Poor Joe- If you play with students covering the part that's missing this is great TPR for body parts.

Make a fortune teller!

Activities

• Make a box with your students! Directions (Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Middle), Actions (Kick, Throw, Fold, Unfold, Meet) Nouns (Invitation, Door) Adjectives (Locked, Unlocked)
• Make a fortune teller. Locations (Center, Corner, Left, Right) Actions (Cur, Flip, Fold, Unfold) 
• Tell a story while they draw or act it out Draw and Tell story.

Songs
Find a song (or make one for your EFL class)

• Traditional Kids Somgs (Great for younger EFL students)

• Teddy Bear Teddy Bear- Directions (Turn Around) Actions (Touch, Jump) 
• Hokey Pokey- Body Parts (All!) Actions (Put your)
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes- Body Parts (Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes, Eyes, Ears, Mouth, Nose)
• Songs I've adjusted to use with my EFL students:
• Sweet Little Bunny For Animals, Body Parts, and Adjectives
• Open them Shut them For Opposites, or Verbs- 
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes with Clothes! Clothing (Hat, Jacket, Trousers, Shoes, Glasses, Ear Muffs, Scarf, Glove)
• Macerena I change this to teach prepositions (Above, Above, Below, Below,  Across, Across, Atop, Atop, Beside, Beside, Down, Down, Around, Around)
• Songs which I use, "as is" to practice the words they use.

The video has 15 songs you can use (but probably not at once)! 

• Bounce, Rock, Roll, Skate- Actions (Bounce, Rock, Roll, Skate)
• Cha Cha Slide Directions (Left, Right, Back, On, Low, Top), Verbs (Turn, Slide, Criss-Cross, Clap, Stomp, Reverse, Freeze, Hop), Numbers (One, Two, Five), Body Parts (Hands, Knees, Foot), Adverbs (Again)
• Cupid Shuffle Directions (Right, Left) Verbs (Kick)
• Da Dip- Actions (Dip) Possessive Pronoun (My, Your)
• Dancing in Heaven- Adjectives (Slow, Quick)
• Do the BartMan- Actions (Move, Shake, Sitting) Directions (Front to back, To the side) Body Parts (Hips) 
• Harlem Shake- Actions (Move) Directions (Left, Right) Adjectives (Fast)
• Hoedown Throwdown- Actions (Glide, Jump, Pop, Lean, Lock, Shake, Shuffle, Stick )  Adjectives (Polka Dot, Zig zag) Nouns (Hawk, Sky) Body Parts (Hands, Head, Hips, One Footed, Toe) Directions (180 twist, Diagonal, In, Left, On, Side to side)
• Locomotion Directions (Up, Back), Body Parts (Hips), Actions (Swing, Jump)
• Mambo #5-Actions (Jump, Move, Put, Clap) Body Parts (Hands)
• Men in Black- Actions (Bounce, Freeze, Slide, Walk) Body Parts (Neck)
• Peppermint Twist Directions: (Round, Up, Down) Actions (Jump, Kick)
• Stanky Leg- Actions (Bounce,Drop, Lean, Shake, Show, Slide, Snap, Stick, Stop, Switch, Wipe) Body Parts (Feet, Fingers, Leg, Shoulders) Adjectives (Low,  Right ) Clothing (Socks)
• The Bunny Hop Directions (Left, Right, Forward, Out) Body Parts (Foot), Actions (Put, Hop) I add a "Backwards and a forwards hop hop hop" to get a bit more vocab. 
• The Time Warp  Directions (Left, Right), Body Parts (Hands, Hips, Knees, Pelvis), Verbs- (Jump, Step, Thrust)
• The Superman Tons of verbs / commands (Sleep, Wave, Hitch a ride, Sneeze, Walk, Swim, Ski, Spray, Blow your Horn, Ring the Bell, Kiss, Comb your Hair, Give a wave, Bend your Knees, Faster, Louder)
• Usher's UTurn Directions (Put your hands up, Circle) Verbs (Bend, Bounce, Get down) Body Parts (Hands, Knees) 
• YMCA- Letters (Y, M, C, A)

FingerPlays 

• A family of pumpkins- Family Members (Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Baby) 
• Five Easter Eggs - Emotions (Angry, Happy, Sad, Scared, Sleepy)
• Itsy Bitsy Spider - Animals (Spider), Prepositions (Up, Down, Out), Actions (Went, Washed, Dried), Weather (Sun, Rain)
•  Open them Shut them (for this and that)- Great for almost any category: Adjectives, Verbs, etc.

This list already seems a bit long so for now I am stopping, but if you have any other songs, games, or activities you think embrace the spirit of TPR be sure to leave it in the comments!