Last year I used our school’s poster maker to create a bulletin board of rejoinders that students could refer to during storytelling to react to the stories. Or when I would use one of the phrases, I could point to that word on the poster so that students could see what it meant.

We all know how important rejoinders are; being able to react to something. It lets the speaker know you are engaged, listening, and giving the appropriation emotion.

This year before I went back to school, I was able to observe my best friend who teaches at a nearby highschool which had already started classes. His whole department has embraced TPRS and I was able to see some new techniques in action.

One of my favorites parts of the lesson I observed was how the teacher incorporated rejoinders into his story. He had 3 reactions written on the board, like this:

1. ¡Qué fabuloso!
2. ¡Qué miedo!
3. ¡Qué mala suerte!

Many people that have had Blaine Ray training know that Blaine likes to make a statement and have the kids react, usually with a “Ooooooo”. I know many people who really don’t like this aspect of TPRS. But my friend was able to get the kids to react as well as give them useful rejoinders.

During the story, after my friend would make a statement, he would say “OH WOW!!” and then hold up a number 1 with his finger. The kids were already trained to chorally shout rejoinder number 1 from the board. If the statement was not good, he would say “OH NO!!” and hold up two fingers, and the students would respond with the second rejoinder. He would switch up the 3 rejoinders on the board every day.

This is something that I plan to start doing this year. But since I am also a deskless classroom, and my students use clipboards when writing, I wanted to add something to their clipboards. I was inspired by this tweet from one of the summer conferences

Put key phrases all over – e.g. On the back of clipboards. Flood them with the language they need. @jasonfritze #iflt17

— Jennifer Wernau (@profewernau) July 13, 2017

So, that gave me the idea to create POST IT REJOINDERS.  Using our template, you can print this rejoinders on post it notes and attach the post it notes to clipboards. Or print all over the rejoinders on put those on the back/front of the clipboards.  

To purchase our template and list of rejoinders click the image below:

You also might be interested in our new Word Wall labels as well.