They say that "getting your students moving, wiggling and laughing is a hallmark of a successful classroom."
TPR stands for Total Physical Response and was created by Dr. James J Asher. It is based upon the way that children learn their mother tongue. Parents have 'language-body conversations' with their children, the parent instructs and the child physically responds to this. The parent says, "Look at mummy" or "Give me the ball" and the child does so. These conversations continue for many months before the child actually starts to speak itself. Even though it can't speak during this time, the child is taking in all of the language; the sounds and the patterns. Eventually when it has decoded enough, the child reproduces the language quite spontaneously. TPR attempts to mirror this effect in the language classroom. (https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/total-physical-response-tpr)
In Second Grade we started by saying a word and demonstrating the action. Then, we have been reviewing our knowledge about actions in a fun way, making sure that we understand which words are actions (or verbs, as we also call them formally) and which are not. One of the activities we have carried out is shown in the video below.
If the teacher said a word that was an action, we would stand up and shake our hands in the air. If, on the other hand, the word was not an action but a noun, a place or an adjective, we would sit on the floor or the chair.
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