DANCE

‘For children to create their own dance routine, they are being allowed to reflect their feelings, ideas and dreams in the choreography (Cone and Cone, 2012)’

In today dance class we learned the 10 skills needed to teach dance. I got my boyfriend to demonstrate them to see how easy they are for children to learn.

Putting all the moves together created this:

 

This just proved how easy teaching dance can be as Posted (2012) said, “Dance has so many benefits.   Apart from the obvious fitness, it is sociable, easy to learn, and requires nothing other than a room and something to play the music on”. 

When we were in the class we got into small groups and created a move for every one of the ten skills.

After we did that we got a sheet with simple maths questions on it which we had to answer. The answers ultimately created a dance routine which we had to perform. I like this activity for teaching dance as it is cross-cirriculur but also fun at the same time.

This class gave me a lot of confidence about teaching dance as I saw how simple and easy it could be. Just by giving the children the name of the skill they could create their own move. This means that I don’t have to choreograph any of the dance and the children get the satisfaction of knowing they did it. Also dance makes great exercise for those who might not enjoy P.E.

 

DRAMA

Today was our first session of drama. I have a lot of drama experience as I did it as a standard grade in third and fourth year and also as a higher in sixth year. I would enjoy teaching it in schools but at the same time I’m aware of the anxiety it can cause some people/children.

Today we looked at the concept of ‘teacher in role’. This involves the teacher or in this case our lecturer Andrew also being part of the drama. We looked at a story about a dragon living in the mountains who was feared by villagers. Andrew played the role of the village leader and we were the villagers. Andrew would ask us questions about the dragon and we, playing villagers, had to answer. I liked this as an idea for use in the classroom as I think it takes away some of the anxiety because the teacher is also doing it and no one is put on the spot.

Following from this we had to split into small groups to do a short improvisation showing what our village was like before and after the dragon attacks. We also had to do a short improvisation following that demonstrated how our group believed the village should deal with the dragon.  I believe along with Hendy and Toon (2001) that roleplay is a good tool to use in the class as it “encourages individual and cooperative play and gives children opportunities to express feelings”.

Although I never felt uncomfortable about the idea of teaching drama i enjoyed this input as it gave me some ideas I would have never considered such as teacher in role.

 

 

References

Cone, T.P. and Cone, S.L. (2012) Teaching children dance. 3rd edn. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers.

Hendy, L. and Toon, L. (2001) Supporting drama and imaginative play in the early years. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Posted (2012) Why dance is so important in schools. Available at: http://teachernews.org.uk/?p=5