No matter what the age of your students, call and response are awesome for getting the whole class to stop and listen!

They work like this: the teacher says a word or phrase and upon hearing it the class choruses a response and then magically look towards the teacher ready for an instruction. With brand new classes, I don’t introduce a call and response until all other behaviour management systems are working smoothly. Until then, I use the 1, 2, 3 song (taught in lesson 1) and sing until all students are singing with me.

The first call and response I usually introduce is the following:

When saying it, I pause between lines to make sure all students are keeping up with the instructions. If it is noisy, I will go through it once to get everyone attention and then repeat it. With very young learners, I modify the instructions by removing the word ‘angkat’ so that it becomes: satu tangan, dua tangan, tepuk tangan.

Here are a few more that can be introduced to students in preparation for upcoming stories or for review. My all time favourite that has worked so, so well with all year levels is this one:

I absolutely love this call and response. It is short and effective. When first introducing this one, I explain that the echo must be exactly the same as the original. If I say it slowly, it must be echoed slowly, if sang, the echo must also be sung etc. It is also incredibly helpful during lessons. If someone puts up the stop sign for karena, all that is required for me to say karena three times and with automaticity. The student inevitably echos, ” because, because, because” with a giant smile on their face!

This is similar to karena, except that before saying but, but, but, students stand up and each time they choral echo ‘but’, they slap their bottom, right, left, right. Students absolutely love this one and it certainly has a lot going for it however I have only done this one with students (and families) I knew very well.

That is all I can think of that have been successful and I am currently investigating new ones that could be used with upcoming topics as bonus repetitions of target structures. Here are a few that I might have some potential!

Thanks to the discussion of Facebook, here are a few more!

The following 2 are from Heidi P:

Thanks to Siobhan H for this one: