The Directions Song

Verse 2:

Sit down and stand up,
Jump up and down and clap your hands.
Sit down and stand up,
Jump up and down and clap your hands.

Gestures and activities to use with “The Directions Song”

The actions are very simple: as you sing along do the actions of the song.

Using “The Directions Song” in class

This is a great song for burning up energy so it can be used as a warm up, energy burner or even to wake everyone up. There is some useful vocab centred around the directions left, right, forwards, back.  This is very much an action-based lesson focusing on the verbs in the song.  You’ll need two lengths of rope for this lesson.

1. Teach left / right. Get a long length of rope and lay it on the floor from the front of the classroom to the back.  Stand at the font and to one side of the rope and get everyone to line up behind you, facing forward.  Shout “Jump to the left” and jump left over the rope.  Get everyone to follow you.  The do the same for the right: “Jump to the right”.  Do this a few times getting everyone to copy you and shout out “Jump to the left / right”.  Next, the teacher can leave the line and shout out for the rest of the class to jump left / right over the rope.  To make it into a game, sometimes shout out for the side of the rope everyone is already on – in this case everyone must jump but stay on the correct side of the rope.
2. Teach forward / back. Now move the rope so it goes across the classroom, left to right.  Stand behind the rope with everyone in line with you.  Shout “Jump forward” and jump over the rope, with everyone copying you.  Next, shout “Jump back”.  Continue in the same way as with point 1 above.
3. Practice left / right / forward / back. Put a second length of rope from the front to the back of the classroom, so with the two ropes it forms a large “+” in the room.  Get everyone to start front, left.  Shout out instructions (e.g.” Jump to the right”, “Jump back”, etc.) so that everyone jumps over the ropes.  Start off slowly and then get faster and faster.
4. Left / right / forward / back pair activity. Put the students into pairs.  If you have hula-hoops use can use them but if not they aren’t necessary.  Demonstrate to the class with one student.  Tell the student to stand in the hula-hoop (or just in some space). Say to the student “Jump forward” and the student must do that.  Then Say another action (e.g. “Jump to the right”).  Continue giving instructions so the student jumps around the space in the hula-hoop (or just in the space in the room).  Now, get your pairs to do the activity, with one student shouting out instructions to his/her partner.  After a while, get the pairs to change.
5. Practice the verbs of the song. Stand everyone in front of you.  Say the first verb and do the action (e.g. “turn around”).  Get everyone to follow you.  Continue through all of the verbs and repeat a few times so that everyone knows the actions.  You can also put the song sheet on the board so everyone can see the actions.
6. Sing “The Directions Song”. Now that everyone has got the idea of the actions for the song they should be ready.  The song is pretty fast so make sure everyone is ready.  The teacher should also do the actions of the song and sing along so to encourage everyone to follow.  Play the song through the first time and just focus on getting the actions right.  After that play the song a couple more times and encourage everyone to sing as well.  You can play this song each week – it will become a class favorite!
7. Set Homework: For homework, give out the Left Right Color worksheets.