The lecture today began with discussing the importance of creative partnerships within schools and how they contribute to developing a better understanding of integrated arts. Creative partnerships are described as creating strong partnerships with a range of organisations helps to deliver a more personalised learning experience for every child and young person. Furthermore, it is vitally important that parents/carers have the option to become more involved. This is beneficial as parents become more involved in all decisions affecting their child’s education and learning. Their support can play a vital role at all stages of education.

Activities that encompass creative partnerships can help to support the children who struggle with attainment, social interaction and behaviour issues.

The practical session today was our last dance input of this module. It was laid out as if we were about to perform in front of an audience as you would with children. We practised all of our dance routines and started off with our warm-up. It is important when teaching children about dance that we first warm-up our bodies to avoid injuries. This session was when we brought each groups individual routines together with the routine we learned as a class. Throughout the weeks, we always referred back to dance being creative which was outlined to us by Cone (2009). It is essential that the idea of the dance should always remain the child’s’. Creative dance should be fun, safe, meaningful and most importantly, child led.

“one of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas” (Cone, 2009, n.p)

Below is the clip of my own class performing the routine.

http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=693887

Dance is an aspect of Expressive Arts which is a crucial way of representing creativity due to its freedom of movement but also has several health benefits linked to it such as the ability to aid fine motor skills, provides children with daily exercise which they might not get at home and can bring a class together socially through partner work. This all contributes to the development of the individual learner.

References

• Purcell Cone, T. (2009) ‘Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances’. Journal of Dance Education. Vol. 9:3, pp. 81-89.

Creative Dance 

According to Cone (2009), ‘creative dance leaves the vision of the dance to the young people’. This ensures that the idea of  dance remains solely the child’s and that the lesson remains fun, safe and a child lead activity.

“Children should be able to compose, perform and appreciate dance.” (Smith-Autard, 2002)

After the lecture, we spent some time with Zara practising our group dance routines which we made up using the 10 basic skills and also the class ‘Halloween’ dance that was created the previous week. This whole idea of today’s session was to encourage individuals to be as creative as possible when a stimulus was provided.

Each group was provided with a list of common dance terms, such as ‘hammer time’, and had to create a dance move from their own interpretation for each term. Furthermore, we then had to put all of those moves together into a small routine.  It was interesting to see how every group’s interpretation was different after being given the same stimulus. Once all of the groups had practised their routines, we then as a whole class performed our Halloween dance, plus our groups small routine all together to the song ‘Timewarp’.

Below is a short clip of my group performing the small routine we created.

References

Smith-Autard, J. M. (2002) The art of dance in education. 2nd ed. London: A. & C. Black.

“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

The 10 Basic Skills Required to Enable a Successful Dance Session

This was the first workshop in dance today and it was led by Zara. The main aspect of this workshop was to identify the top 10 key skills that everyone needs to be able to carry out/ teach an effective dance class. These skills are;

1. Jump
2. Hop
3. Slide
4. Gesture
5. Twist
6. Balance
7. Turn
8. Kick
9. Reach
10. Roll

After Zara had explained to the class what each skill was, we were then split into groups (around 5-6 people) where we had to create our own move to each specific skill. This activity is a great way of engaging children and getting them to express their own creativity. It engages the children as it enables them to interact and produce their own version of the skill which means them feel involved in the process of their learning.

Throughout the session, Zara had us participate in several games which all incorporated the key dance elements. For example, we played a game titled ‘Bean rig’, and the aim of the game was to act out the type of bean shouted. Therefore, if it was a chilli bean then you would have to rub our arms and legs as though we were cold and so on… This is a great game for children as it improves their memory capability by having to remember the different actions and also it is fun and engaging.

As some of the students within the workshop were more apprehensive than others, Zara ensured that we all went through some ice breakers activities to put all the students at ease and get to know everyone. This can be done by sitting in a circle and each individual comes into the middle of the circle and performs a simple dance move while saying their name. This is a particularly good activity when you have a new class and do not quite know everyones names yet. This is a feat way of getting to know all of the children and begin to create a bond between the children to create a pleasant classroom vibe.

This first insight into the dance aspect of ‘Integrated Arts in Education’ has provided me with many activities to support children and develop their dance ability as well as many other skills and qualities that dance enables.

Below is a short clip of a young dancer aged 13. This clip illustrates that teaching a child the basic dance skills from an early age enables them to be successful in dance when they are older.