Participation grades factor significantly into each quarter grade. Many teachers have also found it helpful to prepare students ahead of time as to what to expect. Successful strategies have included sharing with the students about the latest brain research on language acquisition which validates the use of muscles and movement to promote long-term retention of vocabulary. This approach will often diffuse objections before they even arise. Finally, if a student persists in refusing to participate, you might want to agree to let him or her do exercises from a grammar-based text in a corner of the room while the class continues on with TPR S. Odds are that after a few days this student will probably come to you, bored to tears, asking to participate along with the rest of the class.
Many strategies are available for classroom management.
It is our belief, however, that TPR S teachers will experience fewer classroom management problems since the program appeals to so many learning styles and promotes student success at all levels from the very beginning. We all know that traditional, discrete-point grammar tests will indicate a student's ability to manipulate an isolated component of a language, such as filling in the correct pronoun in a given sentence. But these tests do not measure fluency in the most meaningful sense of the word, including the ability to circumlocute in order to communicate or to use existing language skills to send original, meaningful messages. A teacher can use any story or picture from a TPR S curriculum to provide students with traditional test items. In fact, all these types of measurement items are found in TPR S textbooks and can be used as test items.