Please note that these are all the nouns of the action words, whereas most of the other examples here are verbs.ĭealing with actions as opposites not only makes them more memorable but can also add an element of fun, e.g. “Hop on your left foot” or “Play basketball with your left hand”Īnother easy and fun variation is getting students to do alternate big and small jumps/ steps/ hops etc.

This adds two pieces of vocabulary that are very useful for classroom instructions and makes revision of previous vocabulary more interesting.Īnother easy variation on almost any action is to add left and right, e.g. For example with “What’s your name?” you can mime shoulders hunched with palms up for “question/ what”, a cupped palm facing towards another person for “your” and pointing at a real or imagined name badge for “name”.Īn easy variation on any kind of TPR actions practice is just getting the students to do it slowly and quickly. You can use mime to help students answer questions, remember the questions, understand the individual words in a question and/ or take part in question drilling even if they are too shy to speak. stay still for “Eat a ball” but act for “Ride an elephant” Students only do the mime if it possible with the object the teacher names, e.g. “A bird flies” but not “A snake plays tennis”. In this variation on Animals and Actions, students only follow the instructions if the teacher says a sentence that is true in nature, e.g. if they are hopping and saying “Jump”, the kids jump. Students ignore what the teacher is doing and only do what they say, e.g. If the words and action don’t match (jumping and saying “sleep”) the children should stay still. Students only copy the teacher when the thing they say and the thing they do is the same, e.g. More useful language than “Simon says…” you can use to start the sentences includes “Your teacher says…” and “You should/ can/ must…”, To add competition you can add or take away points or eliminate people if they move when you don’t say “Simon says…”.

Students only do the action you say when you start the sentence with “Simon says…” and should stay still if you say just the action word (“Jump!”). You can combine animals and actions and add fun with instructions like “the rabbit is jumping” (making rabbit ears on your head while jumping) or “the elephant is stomping its feet” (swinging one arm in front of your nose as its trunk while stomping your feet). This can also be combined with Sensible Animal Mimes below.

If you don’t have enough for one per student, you can give it to each student at a time and let the class shout out instructions like “jump on the teacher”. Give each student a puppet or plastic animal to do the mimes with. This is a variation on You Are Your Hand that demands less imagination but more equipment. If there are problems with lack of space, noise, discipline and/ or potential breakages in the classroom with students running around, you can get them doing the usual action words for pre-school classes like “run” and “jump” with one hand representing the person (a fist with the first two fingers extended down to represent legs) and the other hand as the ground (open palm face up).

Simon says ideas for kids