A couple of months ago I introduced the letter ر or "R" to my kindergarten students. I was talking to a colleague of mine who is currently doing her PhD. in Education about TPR (Total Physical Response) and she suggested I use in this teaching method lesson.
Let me tell you something. I have taught elementary school children before (2nd-5th graders) and adults (ESL college students), so teaching such a young age was quite a different path. You can't just have these kids sit for an hour and lecture them. That's a big NO NO that I often hear of happening in some Arabic school.
So, since our letter was ر "R" I realized that several body parts began with that letter: ras (head) rokba (knee) Remsh (eyelash) and rejl (leg). Instead of just showing a photo of those body parts, I thought why not sing and come up with our own version of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." This is what I found on YouTube:
Our version, consisted singing: Ras, rems, rokba, rejl, rokba rejl. And repeat. And repeat again. And again. And again. The kids loved this and although there are four new vocabulary words introduced here, many still remember them until this day because they sang it and involved their whole body. In fact, since yesterday we were on the letter "Ein," I had the students do this dance/song again and add the Ein (eye) to the song.
For assessment, I had the students draw a picture of them and circle the words we learned. If they were a little older I would have had them write down what body parts they are, but they are still learning to write in both English and Arabic.
Have you tried TPR before? Do your kids love to sing and dance when learning a new word/lesson?
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