Lesson #7: The Dance!

We started out reviewing what we had learned of the dance. We reviewed section by section. I had them listen to the music so they would know their cues to move onto the next section. It would have been better to have counts but teaching them counting would have taken a whole other class so we had to just stick with lyrics and accents in the music to know when to transition. I then taught them the last section of the dance that added in the last concept we had learned. Then we put it all together!

Next it was time to practice. My goal by the end of class was for them to be able to do it on their own instead of having to watch me every time. I wanted them to know it well enough that when I left, they would remember it and could still practice. We ran through the dance many, many times and I wore them out! Each time I would help them less and less until they had it on their own. The last time we did it, I filmed it and just let them do it. They did a great job! It's always rewarding to be able to see your hard work show and the kids did just that! 

At the end, I asked them to raise their hand and tell me their favorite parts and favorite things they learned from the 7 weeks I had been coming. I got some great answers and it was really interesting to see what they liked the most. I then told them how wonderful this experience has been for me. They were wonderful students and I learned so much about myself and my teaching! I handed out treats I brought for them and we all took a class picture together. They then asked me to dance for them for a minute since they had never seen me dance so I did the combination I had choreographed for my technique class. Mrs. Washburn then gave me letters they had each written to me. This is the best present a teacher can get! It made me so happy to read them when I got home! They were very insightful and very funny! 

I talked at the end with Mrs. Washburn for a moment to go over a few things and to thank her. She was just wonderful to work with! I am going to miss both her and her students a lot! ArtsBridge has been an incredible opportunity for me. I am excited to apply the valuable lessons I have learned to future experiences.

 

This past year I have also blogged for BYU's McKay School of Education and I recently wrote a blog about my ArtsBridge experience! If you would like to view this article, please visit:

http://mckayschooleducators.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/artsbridge-bridging-the-gap-between-core-curriculum-and-the-arts/

 Love them!

Lesson #6: Commas, Apostrophes, Quotation Marks

Mrs. Washburn had told me that her students were struggling with apostrophes, commas, and quotation marks and where to put them in a sentence. I wanted to come up with a short dance exercise that would help them with this before moving on to more choreography. However, I struggled coming up with ideas this time. I emailed my mentor and even asked my parents! Both came up with ideas and I took some ideas from both to create what I did—and it worked! 

  We started out by coming up with a movement or shape that would represent a quotation mark and one to represent a comma. I then showed them one sentence on my computer that was missing its commas, quotation marks. I chose enough volunteers for each word in the sentence and they stood up front in a line facing their peers. They then came up with a movement and did that movement while saying the word they represented. I then asked who knew where the quotation marks and comma goes. I chose those with raised hands and they would run up and do the quotation mark or comma movement we had come up with in between the correct people (or words those people represented). We did this a few times with various sentences.

Next, we did a comma exercise. We, again, came up with an apostrophe and an “s” movement. I then told the students to create a movement that would be about 2 counts. Some of the students were confused by this or came up with the same silly moves they always do. I should have given them parameters of what kind of movement to create, something beyond hand gestures. Most of the time just saying, “be creative” doesn't work as I have found. You need to give them ideas and examples to work off of. For the next part of the exercise, we got in one big circle and each student would show their movement. We would then copy it as a class and add on the apostrophe and “s” movement to the end. Therefore, the movement would become, for example, Caleb's movement because we did his movement and then added on an apostrophe 's'. They enjoyed this activity as well.

  

We then went on with the dance. It went okay. While teaching the next parts of the dance, I learned that I need to be very careful with my vocabulary. I sometimes use words that I have used in the past that meant a different thing. If I try to use that term again, the students think I mean what it meant the first time. The students can't read my mind so I must remember to use clear and specific words to convey what I want. We finished learning the majority of the dance. We used a concept from every lesson and I added fun, basic hip hop in between, which they loved! Went well! Lots of practicing for next week!

Lesson #5: Personal Narrative

Because of Thanksgiving break, it had been a while since I'd seen the students. I decided to talk about personal narrative for this lesson. They hadn't started talking about it in class yet, so I made it an introduction to the concept. I told them a personal narrative is as simple as a true story about yourself. I wanted to start out a bit different, so I asked Mrs. Washburn to have them all bring a piece of paper and a pencil with them. We started out doing one of my favorite English/writing exercises: a free write. I gave them the sentence, “During Thanksgiving break, I...” and told them to finish it. I timed them for 3 minutes and told them to not ever stop writing. Even if your mind started going in a new direction, just keep going! They could write down names of people they saw over Thanksgiving break, things they did, what they ate, etc. 

After 3 minutes, we left our papers and spread out on the floor. We discussed abstraction. What does it mean to abstract something? In dance, you can take one move, change it slightly, and it can become a whole new thing. We focused on 4 different ways you can abstract: level, body part, speed, and size. We then tried some simple, everyday gestures as examples. Show me how you would drink a cup of water. What would it look like? You normally use your hand. But what if you drink a cup of water with your foot? Or what if you drank a giant cup of water, how would you show that? Or maybe kicking a soccer ball really fast or really slow? I told them that this is what we were going to do with their Thanksgiving break activities that they wrote about. In abstraction, it's okay if others can't tell what you are doing, as long as you know. It doesn't even have to look like what your original idea was!

They then chose just one of the items from their free write that they could create movement out of. I gave them 5 minutes to figure out 3 moves to show your experience. Because they were very focused, I gave them a choice. If it was a long experience, they could do 3 different moves and abstract each one. Or, they could take the same move and abstract it in 3 different ways. I reminded them to not act it out but abstract it. It's a dance class, not an acting class. No matter which way they chose to abstract, they had to have 3 moves by the end of the 5 minutes.

When everyone was ready, they got in groups of 3, told their group their story from Thanksgiving, and then taught them their 3 moves. By the end of teaching, each person in the group would know a total of 9 moves. They were encouraged to help each other if a member of their group was having a hard time abstracting.

Then was performance time! I was very impressed! I saw some great things from a few groups! It was easy to see who had chosen 3 different moves and who had chosen the same move and abstracted it 3 different ways. They really enjoyed this activity and it was the most rewarding for me to watch as a teacher because of how well they grasped the concept this time. I think that they loved how they came up with everything and it related back to them. It was their original ideas from their life, their own movement, their own way of abstracting, and their own group work. 

After their performances, we started learning a combination that I came up with. Mrs. Washburn wanted a dance that they could practice and work on after I was gone that would help them remember what they learned from this experience. I was excited to do this! I wanted to add in both fun movement as well as a concept we learned from every lesson we have had. We started out the dance with body shapes, as this is what we worked on the very first class. We talked a little bit about music and timing so that we could create shapes to the beats of the music. I chose the song “I Got a Feeling” from Black-Eyed Peas as it is clean but upbeat and recognizable for the students. We only got through the shapes today, but we will work on more next week!