“One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas.”
To my knowledge with engaged research with the Curriculum for Excellence document, ‘interdisciplinary learning is an important element within Curriculum for Excellence.’ It constitutes one of the four contexts for learning in Building the Curriculum 3.
- Life and ethos of the school as a community
- Curriculum areas and subjects
- Interdisciplinary learning
- Opportunities for personal achievement
In today’s workshop, we focused on linked dance with different contexts of topics and how we adapt the dance lesson depending on what current topic we are studying. This is an excellent way to interlink dance with other curricular areas. For example, if it during the season of Halloween and the other curricular areas are focused on this aspect, then our dance routine can be linked via scary music and popular halloween dance moves (thriller and time warp).
As Halloween is fast approaching, the aim of today was to create dance moves that represent an aspect from Halloween. This method is useful as it provides relevance for children. One activity which we participated in was that we were split into 5 or 6 groups and were each provided with a piece of paper where several picture with objects related to Halloween were on it and had to come up with a 4 beat rhythm dance move.
It is important that when teaching children dance, the lesson remains positive and fun at all times. Children tend to lose engagement when they are simply copying the teacher or have no involvement in the process. Today’s session has illustrated to us, that with very little guidance the teacher can still produce an engaging and effective lesson.
By Zara giving us a stimulus and allowing us to create our own dance moves which fit the theme of Halloween, this kept us interested and made us engage more in the process. This is a great idea to take into the classroom. Another key aspect of learning is that it involves communication between peers which is essential in a child’s learning.
Below is a picture of some of the moves from ‘Time Warp’, this is one of the dances that we practice in today’s session.
References
- http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/images/InterdisciplinaryLearning_tcm4-620626.pdf
- http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/arts/framework/40
